Simultaneous optical and electrical monitoring of cells on a transparent thin film transistor array

This paper reports the label-free monitoring of viability of yeast cells using impedance measurements across a Thin Film Transistor gated electrode array verified with simultaneous optical measurements. Previous reports have shown only differentiation between wholly living and dead cultures without gradation using instantaneous electrical measurements. The electrically measured living cell count matches the fluorescent measurements consistently, independent of cell concentration. This is a crucial step towards high resolution long term cell culture monitoring as well as simultaneous optical measurement experiments of different properties. This serves as a proof of concept for combined optical and electrical measurements on TFT arrays.