Modular Microscope attachment for mobiles..
Remote
Microscopy
A modular microscope
attachment for cell phones could improve the quality of tele-medicine.
The
researchers hope that the innovation will help patients with blood disorders
who live far from medical specialists get more accurately diagnosed and
treated. “I wanted to make optical design relevant to today,” says Daniel Fletcher, a professor of bio-engineering at Berkeley.
Fletcher’s students found it
relatively easy to integrate a simple arrangement of lenses with the cell-phone
camera and transmit magnified images to a laptop using a Bluetooth attachment
to the phone. The work prompted Fletcher to file a patent through the
university and try to make a practical microscope. The researchers say that the
cameras in late-model phones are capable of capturing all the details that a
doctor would need to identify malaria parasites and cancer cells.
The total cost of the first prototype,
built from off-the-shelf components, was $75. The current version provides its
own sample illumination from cheap, low-power LEDs. The device comes in two
versions: with a magnification of about 5 times, for taking images of moles and
rashes, and with a magnification of about 60 times, for capturing the details
of blood cells and parasites.
The higher-magnification
model–the larger of the two–is roughly the size and shape of a roll of
quarters. Both scopes attach to the phone with a modified belt clip.