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Caltech Shows Off a Lensless, Miniaturized Microscope
DeviceGuru writes "Caltech claims its researchers have 'turned science fiction into reality' with their development of a single-chip microscope. Although it doesn't have any lenses, the device is said to provide magnification comparable to that of sophisticated optical microscopes. The microscope's magnifying capabilities derive from a technology known as microfluidics, which is based on the channeling of fluid flow at incredibly small scales. Applications for the so-called 'optofluidic microscope' are expected to include field analysis of blood samples for malaria, or checking water supplies for giardia and other pathogens. The project's director thinks devices based on it could be implanted directly into the human body, in order to help arrest the spread of cancer." There's also coverage of the microscope at EE Times.
Why can't Slash Dot figure this out?
Several major lensmakers are forced to declare bankruptcy.
It's "Caltech", not "Cal Tech".
Ornithopters now the prefered way to travel, as sandworms tend to lead to sunburns, rashes and sand blown hair.
The voice is still being perfected.
The coin in the photo is actually a dime, not a quarter as is indicated in the text.
Caltech. DEI to all my friends.
Practical aplication from TFA:
"Yang thinks devices containing the microscope could even be implanted directly into the human body. Such a device, he suggests, could autonomously screen for and isolate rogue cancer cells in blood circulation"
Discuss!
I will bend like a reed in the wind.
All of the images are then pieced together to create a surprisingly precise two-dimensional picture of the object.
So how much of this device is really software on a much larger device like a laptop?
How many Washington quarter noses will fit in a Library of Congress?
Could they have just used millimeters?
love is just extroverted narcissism
I didn't know you'd only need a microscope to stop cancer...
for Larry Craig's covert bathroom visits
Regards,
Filipino Monkey
Mentioned in a short story by Isaac Asimov, 'anopticon' Was featured in the short story "Anniversary" the sequel to "Marooned off Vesta"
This device was a microscope, and a telescope with no lenses.
Very clever: no lenses are required since the specimens are in more or less direct contact with the imaging surface. I wonder why the sensors have to be in a linear array though -- couldn't they be expanded to a rectangular array in order to get a conventional image instead of having the specimens sliding across a linear array and generating scan lines?
Suspicious that they couldn't include an example of the images this thing is capable of taking. If I'm going to be using a microscope, I'm going to want it to be able to, you know, SCOPE.
Also suspicious: the "motivation". FTFA
Guh?!? Very little change?
Electron microscope- 1931
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electron_microscope
Phase contrast-1930's
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phase_contrast_microscopy
Fluorescence microscopy- I don't know but well after the 16th century
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluorescence_microscopy
Confocal microscopy- 1957
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confocal_microscopy
2 photon microscopy-1960?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-photon_excitation_microscopy
Total internal reflection fluorescence microscope- also don't know, at least after fluorescence microscopy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_internal_reflection_fluorescence_microscope
Inverted microscope- I don't know, but not too old
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_microscope
And considering the 16th century microscopes had but one lens and no artifical light sources, you won't find anything similar to that in a modern day lab.
http://www.az-microscope.on.ca/history.htm
a micro-microscope?
wat
All that effort and no goatse link? You're really losing your touch, Mr. Bang-on-the-Keyboard-Man.
Something that the article left out and I think is an interesting applcication is that it would work well with UV and X-ray sources. It is difficult to make optics that don't block these short wavelengths.
love is just extroverted narcissism
Just because it's not built from glass (which some may argue is also a liquid) does not make it any less of a lens.
It's not lensless, it's a different kind of lens.
I expected a new microscope to have some pictures to show...
No sig today...
Well, the first part of my post, upon further inspection, is incorrect. It's poor reporting on the part of "device guru" to not include examples, but the researchers themselves do provide a nice picture of a c.elegans in one of the links. Called that one a bit early.
So... sorry guys at caltech/ cal tech, if you happen to be reading. And guys from "device guru," shame on you (doesn't excuse me though.)
An aperture does not a lens make. (Actually, Aperture makes photos better... or portal guns... whatever.)
and hot grits, I want to see her under one of these little beauties! No, I want to see her under a Beowulf cluster of them! Woot!
Going on means going far
Going far means returning
Didn't click on the one with the images.
I expected *any* article about new microsocopes to have a sample but apparently only one out of three feels the necessity.
My bad.
No sig today...
He didn't say "an optikon," he said "anopticon!"
If you don't know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else.
And considering the 16th century microscopes had but one lens and no artifical light sources, you won't find anything similar to that in a modern day lab.
http://www.az-microscope.on.ca/history.htm
Except, perhaps, a hand-held magnifying lens!
Your list left off a few important advances ...
SEM vs TEM (you mentioned electron microscope, but they're very different beasts)
Darkfield microscopes.
Atomic force microscopes.
Tomographic microscopes (although I suppose confocals are as good an example of this class as any)
X-ray diffraction microscopes.
Gigapixel microscopes (very new approaches to making high resolution images that span macroscopic dimensions).
Serial electron microscopes.
Near-field optical microscopes.
And probably more that I'm forgetting. There has been amazing progress in instrument building!
Put my fist through my alarm clock with its ding-dong death inside my ear. - The Blackjacks.
Well, you know, given all the progress in microscopes I wasn't going to list all the different types that had been invented since Antony van Leeuwenhoek first looked at his sperm (which was obtained "fresh and not sinfully," so Mrs. van Leeuwenhoek deserves some credit there too.)
That said, I can't belive I forgot AFM! A microscope based on touch is a revolution. I did think about SEM vs TEM, but only after I had already posted, and I think the wiki article probably mentioned both.
Gigapixel microscopy I haven't heard of. I'm assuming it's taking multiple pictures though?
About the autonomous part...
What kind of autonomous pathogen detection systems do we have today?
I am not talking about strip tests.
I am thinking more in a way of pattern recognition system plugged into a digital microscope, combined with a database of say.. known bacteria.
Sounds to me that building something like that should be a logical practical application from the moment we managed to strap a digital camera to a microscope.
With an "on a chip" microscope for 10$, I wonder... Shouldn't someone be working on something like that?
And what is the current state of the "lab on a chip"?
I mean... I AM eagerly awaiting that holodeck as much as the next guy or girl, but medical tricorders MIGHT be a tad more important.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Gigapixel microscopy I haven't heard of. I'm assuming it's taking multiple pictures though?
That's it. It's a technique that's so new that it doesn't have a fully accepted name yet (I'm just on the fringes of the field, so I might be a few months out of date). The idea was developed for electron microscopy, but could be easily adapted to light microscopy as well: put an automated stage in the beampath so that the sample can be shifted from place to place and a high resolution image captured at each stopping point, and then computationally stitch the tiles together. Sounds relatively straightforward, except that when you want to capture a sample 10 mm across at 10 nm resolution, even the smallest positioning accuracies, field non-linearities, temperature distortions, etc., accumulate. For a simple idea like this, there's a heap of imaging hardware engineering (including hard vacuum stuff) and software engineering to be done. The computational loads for manipulating a one-million-by-one-million pixel image are staggering. Just moving one of these images around on the network is challenging. Think of it this way: a standard digital camera takes an N-megapixel image; these microscopes are constructing images with one thousand times as many pixels.
But the really no way! part of these projects is that the intent is then to progress in the third dimension as well to create high-res 3D images. One such assembled 3D image will take many TB to represent, and the goal is to be able to computationally fly through the sample and follow small structures across large extents.
Put my fist through my alarm clock with its ding-dong death inside my ear. - The Blackjacks.
Don't forget Atomic Force Microscopy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_force_microscope
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
Not quite the same as the article but close. Thought about this some time ago. Before some gomer patent troll patents this, here is the general idea in kit form to get it in the public domain.
Take a board video camera and remove the lens assembly to expose the imaging surface on the chip. Assume your specimen is on a standard microscope slide with a cover glass. Turn slide over and place cover glass in contact with imaging surface on CCD chip. Shine light thru the microscope slide and view image on video monitor. Can do this with all sorts of specimen containers, even tiny aquariums containing live pond water samples.
Now here is the really cool part. If you replace the light with an array of LED's and control them with software while capturing the video frames, you can reconstruct 3D images of whatever is on the slide.
Eat that patent trolls!
"The project's director thinks devices based on it could be implanted directly into the human body, in order to achieve super zoom vision!"
Music speeds up when you yawn, but does not change pitch.
Seems to me this is just generic beamforming or synthetic aperature.
The idea is that a small object is sent down a micro-fluidic channel which passes over an array of sensors that take a repetitive sequence of "pictures" of it as it slowly moves down the channel (each of the M sensor takes say N pictures). All the "pictures" are later re-assembled as if they were taken at the same time with very small spatial displacement (instead of far apart in space and time). If you know the constant velocity V of the channel and the constant distance between the sensors this isn't too hard to do (just math). This is the basics of the synthetic aperature or beam-formed approach.
The slight twist they came up with is the arrangement of the sensors. Instead of just putting them in a straight line down the direction of motion of the channel, the sensors on the chip in a diagonal across the narrow width of the channel. If you just organized the array in the direction of motion, you only get improved resolution in the direction of motion. With this arrangment, you can get better spatial resolution in the direction orthogonal to the motion as well.
The microfluid channel seems like the technology limiter to me. I imagine for stuff like blood or water (which you can send down a microfluidic channel at an easy to measure constant velocity) it works pretty well, but if something is moving (so that different pictures in time are radically different, not related to the velocity of the fluid in the channel), it would be really, really blurry or have aliasing. Remember those panoramic class picture with the pin-hole aperature so you could shake your head during the shot and blur-out, or if you were fast enough, you could run from one side of the picture and be in two places at once. These are the same problems with any long-time aperature imaging technique.
In any case, if instead it was an imaging technique like one that was described in Michael Crichton's "Prey" book (not his best work, but interesting), now that would be something to write home about...