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Turning a Cell Phone Into a Microscope

Posted by timothy on from the in-line-for-a-macarthur-grant dept.

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.

5 of 50 comments (clear)

  1. Star Trek..... by 3seas · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Tricorders ..... as we do already have the flip open communicator in standard use.

    Hmmm.... has any cell phone company even thought to license and/or make a functional cell phone of the replica of the Star Trek communicator of the original series? Or would that be like to Galaxy Quest .....

  2. Hrm by ShooterNeo · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I do have to question the rationale behind this and other "inventions."

    Basically, the theory is we can improve third world medical care by making (crappy) cell phone microscopes and I've also seen a shoddy centrifuge made from an eggbeater. Thing is, perfectly working USED first world medical equipment (aka a 50 year old microscope or centrifuge) is still going to be overwhelmingly better than this stuff. Moreover, the cost of the equipment is generally not the problem in the U.S. : it's the cost of training the people to do the work. I would imagine that the same bottleneck on trained personnel is ultimately the limiting factor in the third world as well.

    1. Re:Hrm by ceoyoyo · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I don't think the idea is to make a general microscope, it's to make a little lab-in-a-box for detecting particular diseases.

      For example, suppose you want to detect sickle cell anemia, which is much more common in Africa than it is elsewhere. You can a) go out in the field, take a blood sample, send or take it back to the lab, wait for the lab to analyze it, then try to find the person again to tell them or b) take a drop of blood, pop it into your portable sickle cell anemia detector, and give them the diagnosis there on the spot.

      You can do (b) with a cell phone and someone who's trained to do a finger stick in a few minutes. For (a) you need the finger sticker and a qualified lab tech, plus bulky, delicate equipment that you're probably not going to haul around rural Africa (or rural anywhere else).

      The approach won't work for everything, but there are undoubtably niches it can fill nicely.

  3. Hmm... software and portability? by denzacar · · Score: 3, Insightful

    From TFA:

    The adapted phones may be used for screening in places far from hospitals, technicians or diagnostic laboratories, Dr. Ozcan said.

    "Right now you need a microscope, and you need trained people," Dr. Bryson said. "But this device would allow you to work without either in a remote area. "

    M. Fatih Yanik, an assistant professor of electrical engineering and computer science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said, "This makes it possible for ordinary people to gather medical information in the field just by using a cellphone adapted with cheap parts."

    Cellphones tend to be pocket-sized and easily replaceable if lost or damaged. FAR easier than that used equipment you refer to.
    Older equipment from the "first world" is bulky, difficult to service and repair, and needs actual experts to work it. Often, it also needs specific work conditions (such as certain flavor of electricity) not readily available "in the field".

    Also, it is rather hard to write software for those old optical/mechanical devices you mention.
    Which is kinda important, since it is the software that does the pathogen detection in these mobile-phone-microscopes.
    And that greatly reduces those training costs you mention.

    --
    Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
  4. multi-tool by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    But in these days of decent $100 optical microscopes, this seems to do less and cost more (not that there's anything wrong with that).