Tracking in real time the crawling dynamics of adherent living cells with a high resolution surface plasmon microscope

We introduce a high resolution scanning surface plasmon microscope for long term imaging of living adherent mouse myoblast cells. The coupling of a high numerical aperture objective lens with a fibered heterodyne interferometer provides both enhanced sensitivity and long term stability. This microscope takes advantage of the plasmon resonance excitation and the amplification of the electromagnetic field in near-field distance to the gold coated coverslip. This plasmon enhanced evanescent wave microscopy is particularly attractive for the study of cell adhesion and motility since it can be operated without staining of the biological sample. We show that this microscope allows very long-term imaging of living samples, and that it can capture and follow the temporal deformation of C2C12 myoblast cell protusions (lamellipodia), during their migration on a at surface.