Simple scope: This microscope, which weighs just 46 grams, has no lenses. A sample is loaded into the open drawer; light from an LED passes through the sample and is picked up by an imaging chip that sends image data through the USB cord to a cell phone or laptop.
Aydogan Ozcan
Inexpensive, lightweight device provides basic medical diagnostics and images.
A small digital microscope that costs just a few dollars can plug into a cell phone and perform basic medical diagnostics that would ordinarily require expensive lab equipment. The microscope, which uses no lenses, saves on cost and weight by using algorithms to get more information from images. The device can generate blood counts and identify disease cells and bacteria from simple images sent through a USB cord to a cell phone that uses software to processes the data. The latest version of the microscope integrates an interference-based contrast method to provide better images in addition to diagnostic information.
The researchers developing the device hope it will bring better medical diagnostics to parts of the world where cell phones are prevalent but access to expensive clinical diagnostic equipment is not. Even basic cell phones now have significant processing power that can be used to analyze images of blood smears and other samples on the spot, enabling a patient to get on the right tuberculosis drug faster and enabling health-care providers to identify drug-resistant strains faster. What sets the new microscope apart from other efforts at integrating optical diagnostics with cell phones is the effort to make it as simple and cheap as possible. That means eliminating expensive lenses, and using software to get medical information from blurry images.
The device was made by researchers led by Aydogan Ozcan, professor of electrical and biomedical engineering at UCLA. It has only two key hardware components: a light-emitting diode to illuminate the sample and an light-sensing chip. These components each cost about 30 to 40 cents. Slides smeared with samples are loaded into the microscope through a small drawer that sits between the LED and the light sensor. A USB port carries power and data between the scope and a cell phone. The tiny microscope measures about six centimeters high and four centimeters on each side; it weighs just 46 grams.
Since the microscope has no lenses, it does not magnify the images. Yet it is able to gain resolution just under two micrometers, and makes images that are about as clear as those made by a conventional 40X microscope. This is made possible by image-processing software. "We compensate for everything in the digital regime," says Ozcan. As light from the LED passes through a given type of cell, the light bends or diffracts in a characteristic way depending on the cell's size, shape, and refractive index. Data picked up by the light-sensing chip is carried to a cell phone for analysis. Ozcan has previously demonstrated running software on the phone that consults a library of diffraction signatures characteristic of particular cell types and bacteria to identify and count the cells in the sample.
Made from cheap, mass-producible parts, the device could help scientists learn how the brain directs movement.
A cheap smart-phone microscope could bring fluorescent medical imaging to areas with limited access to health care.
This is not really a microscope
This thing isn't a general-purpose microscope. It's a device for counting blood cells. Calling it a "microscope" is misleading.
Re the earlier commenter who says you can buy 200x USB microscopes: yes you can, but 200x isn't necessarily better than 100x. What matters is not how big the image is, but how small the details you can resolve are. And for transparent objects like bacteria, phase-contrast at magnification of maybe 60x will usually show you more detail than magnification of 200x without phase contrast even if the optical quality is the best available.
Re: This is not really a microscope
this IS a microscope.
if you would like to see some images that it generates you can visit:
http://www.rsc.org/publishing/journals/LC/article.asp?doi=C000453G
you will need to click html version or pdf version of the paper.
Re: This is not really a microscope
Sure you can...... the only catch is, you are required to pay the subscription publishing site $44.31 USD or £30 + taxes - what a bargain to view images created by a $3 device.
A microscope you can use anywhere, for the price of a Big Mac. I'm no genius, but I have to say 'good job'. How soon can I expect them to be on Woot?
What a great piece of kit, well done
I can see great potential for this. I think in time the resolution will increase, not to mention, specific fluorescent labeled antibodies, to detect specific bacteria.
The question, is that I feel that with today’s plastic lens, which can be mass produced, and a tube, a base and a reflecting mirror, (or led light source)one can build a cheap lens microscope for ten dollars... And send the image via an optical cable to a cell phone for digital imaging.
400X images would be much clearer, and it would be easier to differentiate complex samples, (Cells, necrosis, bacteria and debris and artifacts) not to mention simple stains.
As the example shown, the image is difficult to evaluate. Alas, perhaps I am a Luddite....
But, I'm excited about this revolutionary approach and I am always receptive to new technology.
And I admire the brilliance of the thinking out of the box..(I hate that analogy, but can’t think of any other way of saying it.)
ron hansing 6.1.10
For anyone who is really interested...
There are references "out there" in the wild about research studies (initially done in academia; google "lensless imaging random mask") which have essentially proven that you can substitute computation for lens quality -- to the extent that your resolution becomes a factor of computation time ONLY, while your actual physical implementation consists, typically, of a pinhole and a very-carefully-randomized shadow-mask in front of a relatively small CCD sensor. Oddly enough, the random nature of the shadow mask is the key to the whole operation.
Given the proliferation of inexpensive yet highly powerful DSP devices, the concept of scattering cheap high-resolution optical devices around in the environment opens up a whole realm of opportunities for exploit.
Which is equivalent, back in the early 80's, to realizing that hard disk drives had reached a price/performance point allowing affordable random access to data -- which opened up the niche for interactive voice response systems.
Manufacturing in the United States is in trouble. That's bad news not just for the country's economy but for the future of innovation.
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profquatermass
57 Comments
Magnification
Isn't x40 awfully small?
Considering you can buy domestic x200 USB microscopes.
Personally I'd like to see a x400 microscope for domestic use, then we can get it and a home PC to identify some of the most common bacteria found in the home.
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john_henry_v33
2 Comments
Re: Magnification
the resolution of a microscope is not measured with magnification.
it is measured with the numerical aperture and the wavelength.
this small microscope achieves a resolution of around 1 to 2 microns sufficient to image cells.
you can project a digital image that is magnified by 300 X over a screen, but it may not always show micron scale resolution, as magnification not necessarily implies spatial resolution.
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Shootist
39 Comments
Re: Magnification
I just need one to view the trichomes on my marijuana plants.
Reply