FIGURE 1.

(A) Schematic representation of a vesicle hovering over a glass slide, with the membrane-substrate distance = h, exhibiting a contact disk (refractive index of inner buffer = n_in, of outer buffer = n_out, and of the vesicle wall = n_lipid); and reflection from the three interfaces that have to be taken into account for quantitative interpretation of RICM of vesicles. (B) Expected reflectance (R_norm: see Eq. 1, normalized with respect to the expected background), plotted as a function of the refractive index of the inner buffer (n_in) and the vesicle-membrane/substrate distance (h) for a typical experimentally relevant value of the outer buffer (= 1.332) and wavelength of 546 nm. The white line indicates, for each n_in, the h corresponding to the minimum of the intensity (h₀); see Eq. 2.