Ex vivo motility contrast imaging

1. A method for ex vivo evaluation of biological sample response to a stimuli comprising:

obtaining a sample of a target biological sample and placing the sample in a chamber of a sample holder;

performing biodynamic imaging (BDI) on the sample to extract BDI data of the entire sample;

generating optical coherence imaging (OCI) data from the BDI data;

generating motility contrast imaging (MCI) data from the OCI data;

using the MCI data, selecting an area of the sample having the highest normalized standard deviation (NSD) value;

subjecting the sample to a perturbation or external condition; and

performing MCI analysis on the selected area to determine the biological sample response to the perturbation or external condition.

2. The method of claim 1 , wherein:

the step of performing BDI on the sample includes obtaining 500 frames of digital hologram images of the sample; and

the step of generating OCI data includes reading all 500 frames and performing OCI analysis.

3. The method of claim 2 , wherein the step of generating OCI data includes:

calculating a back-scattered brightness of the OCI image;

determining a mean intensity in the image;

abandoning the area of the sample in the image if the mean intensity is less than a threshold value.

4. The method of claim 1 , wherein the step of generating MCI data includes:

determining a mean NSD value for the image; and

abandoning the area of the sample in the image if the mean NSD value is less than a threshold value.

5. The method of claim 1 , wherein the step of performing BDI includes determining a boundary of the biological sample within the chamber whereby the BDI scan can be limited to the boundary of the biological sample.

6. A method for ex vivo evaluation of biological sample response to a stimuli comprising:

obtaining a sample of a target biological sample and placing the sample in a chamber of a sample holder;

using an imaging device to obtain a stimuli response spectrogram for the biological sample;

generating semi-local scalar fields from spectrograms from a plurality of limited areas or regions of interest (ROI) of the biological sample;

constructing a spatial gradient operator using the semi-local scalar fields of the plurality of ROIs;

using the spatial gradient operator, identifying a direction of maximum ascent or descent from a current ROI, and generating a unit gradient vector corresponding to the direction;

moving the biological sample relative to the imaging device by one ROI radius (or diameter) in the direction of the unit gradient vector;

generating another semi-local set of spectrograms and a new gradient vector at a new ROI, and iterating this step until a stationary region of the scalar field is reached; and

then identifying a then current ROI as the primary ROI for the biological sample to evaluate or predict the response to the overall biological sample to a particular stimuli or response therapy.

7. An apparatus for selective imaging of an ex vivo biological sample, comprising: a sample holder including a chamber for holding the biological sample;

a biodynamic imaging system operable to extract biodynamic imaging data of the sample within the chamber of the sample holder;

a translation stage operable for at least relative x-y translation between the sample holder and the biodynamic imaging system;

a computer interface operably connected to the biodynamic imaging system and the translation stage, and configured to execute program instructions operable to:

perform motility contrast imaging and evaluation of the biological sample to generate a 3D spectrogram of the biological sample;

calculate a gradient in the spectrogram for the biological sample; and

activate the translation stage to iteratively translate the sample holder relative to the biodynamic imaging system to a plurality of regions of interest until a stationary point in the gradient is obtained.