Turning a Cell Phone Into a Microscope 50
stupendou writes with this excerpt from the New York Times: "Microscopes are invaluable tools to identify blood and other cells when screening for diseases like anemia, tuberculosis and malaria. But they are also bulky and expensive. Now an engineer, using software that he developed and about $10 worth of off-the-shelf hardware, has adapted cellphones to substitute for microscopes." But not based on optical magnification: the article explains that Aydogan Ozcan, a UCLA assistant professor of electrical engineering, has combined the wireless transmission abilities and imaging sensors now typical in wireless phones to make the phones capable of detecting cell abnormalities and more by capturing wave interference patterns from body fluids — like blood — and sending them on for analysis.
Update 20091108 15:03 GMT by timothy: Dave Bullock mentions this gallery he shot last year for Wired showing how a phone is hacked to add microscope abilities. "The new version looks a bit more polished, to say the least," he writes.
Update 20091108 15:03 GMT by timothy: Dave Bullock mentions this gallery he shot last year for Wired showing how a phone is hacked to add microscope abilities. "The new version looks a bit more polished, to say the least," he writes.
Article lacking in details (Score:5, Informative)
A high-throughput on-chip imaging platform that can rapidly monitor and characterize various cell types within a heterogeneous solution over a depth-of-field of ~4mm and a field-of-view of ~10 cm^2 is introduced. This powerful system can rapidly image/monitor multiple layers of cells, within a volume of ~4 mL all in parallel without the need for any lenses, microscope-objectives or any mechanical scanning.
In this high-throughput lensless imaging scheme, the classical diffraction pattern (i.e., the shadow) of each micro-particle within the entire sample volume is detected in less than a second using an opto-electronic sensor chip. The acquired shadow image is then digitally processed using a custom developed ‘‘decision algorithm’’ to enable both the identification of the particle location in 3D and the characterization of each micro-particle type within the sample volume.
Through experimental results, we show that different cell types (e.g., red blood cells, fibroblasts, etc.) or other micro-particles all exhibit uniquely different shadow patterns and therefore can be rapidly identified without any ambiguity using the developed decision algorithm, enabling high-throughput characterization of a heterogeneous solution.
http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/121401991/abstract [wiley.com]
http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/fulltext/121401991/PDFSTART [wiley.com]
This topic was also covered a few months ago -- with better results, but using actual lenses instead of just the bare CCD sensor:
http://science.slashdot.org/story/09/07/24/1440227/Use-Your-Cell-Phone-To-Diagnose-Blood-Diseases [slashdot.org]
Dupe???? (Score:1, Informative)
Was this not already covered here on /.?
Well, maybe not exactly, but I think this technology was already covered here... [slashdot.org]
A real Paper on this subject (Score:3, Informative)
From Dr. Ozcan's list of refereed papers [ucla.edu] :
Lensfree on-chip cytometry towards wireless health [ieee.org]
Re: HRM concern about trained personnel (Score:1, Informative)
The numbers don't add up (Score:5, Informative)
There's some serious issues with their idea of cost, too. Most field clinics in India (I have a brother who works as a malaria epidemiologist there) use microscopes that cost around $100-150, to claim replacing that with a $300+ camera phone (admittedly, the whole cell phone things looks like a huge marketing gimmick since they just use a high-end kodak interline CCD anyways) is "inexpensive" is more than a little disingenuous.
I've ranted before on the science behind the LUCAS system before, so I'll try not to repeat myself, but the utility of such as system would be limited primarily to RBC/WBC counts which are typically done either in counting chambers on a microscope or in an automated system measuring light scatter (both are called hemocytometers). While I can believe that they could very well do what an automated hemocytometer does using a lower cost instrument, applications in screening for disease causing agents such as malaria parasites and mycobacteria are doubtful except at very high parasitemia (when a high enough density of parasites are present to scatter a detectable quantity of light) or at very high concentrations of bacteria in sputum (same story) at which point microscopy would be easier and cheaper to detect the objects. When objects start getting down to the 1 micron size-scale, it becomes exceedingly difficult to scatter light with them. Even looking at their published results, some of their diffraction patterns are already barely above background with cells in the 5-10 micron range. Trying to detect a minute variation inside one of those diffraction patterns (from a malaria parasite within an RBC, for example) while perhaps possible would not be very clinically reliable when you have no control over what might be in your samples.