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Scientists are developing methods to grow new organs in a lab, but monitoring the amount of cells that have grown is a problem they need to solve since most current cell counting methods require disrupting the cells. Scientists at NIST used optical coherence tomography (OCT) to determine the amount of cells. OCT shines light waves on the cells to check for the motion of the organelles within the cells, and the organelles moving indicates a cell is alive. There are many advantages to OCT over traditional cell counting methods such as OCT being label free(they do not need to attach anything to the cells to detect them) and it counts the cells in the environment they are growing in so we can see where they are while most cell counting methods involve removing a sample for counting. This method has many groundbreaking implications in understanding how cells grow and how tissues change over time in the human body since they can continuously monitor the cells.

The scaffold is the location in which the cells grow. The way you set up the scaffold can be important in determining how the cells behave. 

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