The FDTD approach applied to light scattering from single biological cells

Biological cells can be considered as dielectric objects with a given refractive index distribution. Light scattering simulations provide us with an efficient tool for studying cell morphology as well as the nature of scattering and its sources. The analysis of this information is the basis for a better understanding and development of new optical methods for non-invasive biomedical diagnostics. Here we demonstrate the potential of Finite-Difference Time-Domain (FDTD) method based software tools for the simulation of light scattering from single cells in situations where other approaches simply do not work or the approximations inherited in them begin to be questionable