Portable Microscope Uses Holograms Instead of Lens

Posted by samzenpus on Thursday September 1, 2011 @01:58PM from the discount-medical-supply dept.

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."

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Infrastructure by Fnord666 · 2011-09-01 14:11 · Score: 3, 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?

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'The tyrant will always find pretext for his tyranny.' - Aesop's Fables