Development of high-speed camera circuits for diffraction imaging flow cytometer

In this study we present design and test results of high-speed camera circuits used in a diffraction imaging flow cytometer for detection and analysis of the biological cells based on a time-delay-integration (TDI) principle. The TDI camera design can eliminate image blur which often occurs with conventional CCD cameras for imaging flowing objects. We have developed the master control circuit, driver circuit, signal processing circuit, and the method of synchronization between the line charge transfer in TDI-CCD and flowing cells. Based on these results, a TDI-CCD image acquisition system was built to allow acquisition of high-contrast diffraction image data from the flowing cells and extract their 3-D morphology features for further analysis.