Portable Microscope Uses Holograms Instead of Lens 64
Zothecula writes "While financial contributions are certainly a great help to health care practitioners in developing nations, one of the things that they really need is rugged, portable, low-cost medical equipment that is compatible with an often-limited local infrastructure. Several such devices are currently under development, such as a battery-powered surgical lamp, a salad-spinner-based centrifuge, and a baby-warmer that utilizes wax. UCLA is now working on another appropriate technology in the form of a small, inexpensive microscope that uses holograms instead of lenses to image what can't be seen by the human eye."
Infrastructure (Score:4, Insightful)
Although the microscope itself collects raw data, an external laptop, smartphone, or cloud-based system performs all the processing.
The spatial resolution ... is reportedly similar to that offered by low- to medium-power lenses.
At this point don't you have more in infrastructure needs than you would with a basic optical microscope?