Nondestructive on-line measurement system for in-vitro cell proliferation in micro-porous polymer scaffolds

Tissue engineering requires diagnostic tools for in-vitro monitoring of cell proliferation in three-dimensional scaffolds. Current methods are inaccurate, prohibitively expensive, or compromise sample integrity. This work presents a nondestructive system for the on-line measurement of cell concentration in micro-porous polymer scaffolds. The system is based on measuring the reflection coefficient of the sample with an open-ended coaxial probe over a frequency range of 10-200 MHz. An aperture admittance model is used to extract the complex permittivity from the reflection measurement. Then, effective medium approximation is used to relate the complex permittivity to the cell properties and concentration of the sample.; The system detected the relative cell concentration differences between micro-porous polymer scaffolds seeded with progressively greater number of pre-osteoblast cells. Proliferation of pre-ostoblasts over 14 days was measured within 56 scaffolds by the system and a concurrent DNA assay. The recorded cell proliferation data corresponded well to each other and those found in literature. Thus, the system can be applied for on-line monitoring of cell proliferation within micro-porous polymer scaffolds.