Automated and unbiased methods of non-invasive cell monitoring able to deal with complex biological heterogeneity are fundamentally important for biology and medicine. Label-free cell imaging provides information about endogenous autofluorescent metabolites, enzymes and cofactors in cells. However extracting high content information from autofluorescence imaging has been hitherto impossible. Here, we quantitatively characterise cell populations in different tissue types, live or fixed, by using novel image processing and a simple multispectral upgrade of a wide-field fluorescence microscope. Our optimal discrimination approach enables statistical hypothesis testing and intuitive visualisations where previously undetectable differences become clearly apparent. Label-free classifications are validated by the analysis of Classification Determinant (CD) antigen expression. The versatility of our method is illustrated by detecting genetic mutations in cancer, non-invasive monitoring of CD90 expression, label-free tracking of stem cell differentiation, identifying stem cell subpopulations with varying functional characteristics, tissue diagnostics in diabetes, and assessing the condition of preimplantation embryos.

Herein, we report the unsymmetric effect on the functional (piezoelectric and semiconducting) properties of cadmium-doped 1D-ZnO nanorods (NRs), which have a higher ionic radius (0.97 Å). The growth of Cd-ZnO NRs, which have a hexagonal wurtzite structure without any secondary CdO phases, along the c-axis was confirmed by the XRD patterns, and oxidation states observed from XPS analyses verified the diffusion of Cd2+ into ZnO NRs. A one-fold reduction in the piezoelectric properties was determined by the fabrication of a nanogenerator, and enhancement in the semiconducting properties was studied using an Ag/Cd-ZnO NRs/Ag device with various wt% of Cd doped into the ZnO NRs lattice. Cd-ZnO NRs improve the photogenerated charge carriers (Iph ∼ 330 μA) compared to pure ZnO NRs (Iph ∼ 213 μA), obtained at a bias voltage of 10 V, a wavelength of 365 nm and a light intensity of 8 mW cm−2. The Cd-ZnO NRs (1 wt%) based sensor shows good photoresponse with a detectivity (D*) limit of 1 × 1011 cm H1/2 W−1 compared to that of pure ZnO NRs (D* = 5.4 × 1010 cm H1/2 W−1). We also demonstrate a self-powered UV sensor (SPUV-S) connected parallel to the ZnO NRs based nanogenerator as an independent power source to drive the Cd-ZnO NRs UV sensor. The low-temperature hydrothermal synthesis of Cd-ZnO NRs is simple, cost-effective, and scalable for industrial applications.