Turning a Smart Phone Into a Microscope

MTorrice writes "By attaching a lightweight, inexpensive device to the back of a smart phone, scientists can convert the phone into a sensitive fluorescence microscope. The attachment [paper abstract] allows the phone's camera to take pictures of single nanoparticles and viruses, possibly providing a portable diagnostic tool for health care workers in developing countries. For example, doctors in remote regions could use the technique to measure HIV viral loads in patients' blood samples, allowing the doctors to easily monitor disease progression and determine the best course of treatment."

Comments

Re:the stage

[YttriumOxide]

one of the smallest things in a microscope is the lens. most of the microscope is precision, vibration damped, gearing to manipulate the focal distance precisely. If you are going for high resolution its not yet clear to me how you avoid the expensive non-portable part of the microscope.

Don't forget, this isn't talking about a standard "microscope" but rather a "fluorescence microscope", which is actually a fairly different thing.

The linked article (and linked paper abstract) has images that give you an idea of what they're doing much better than TFA does.

Not in the US of A

[deviated_prevert]

For determining the viral load of a patent in the US the software necessary to image detect most viruses is patent encumbered. The gold standard test to determine the viral load of HCV is under a ridiculous patent and as such is completely out of reach for easy wide scale use. Using the physical image shape of the HCV virus and others is patented and you are not allowed to develop software to assay it, this is the only reason why in Canada the test is only done once on HepC patients and doctors are told not to order the test because it is out of this world expensive because of the site license costs of software to do the test.

These diagnostic patents are all held and defended by the American drug company cartels who hold the world ransom. Same thing applies to the detection of the breast cancer gene, that is why you only see the wealthy being tested for this indicator gene, then deciding to have their breasts removed if they inherited the gene. Nothing is holding back the rapid advancement of diagnostics more than the drug company cartels and they need to be broken up permanently the same way standard oil was dealt with!

All well and good developing cheap portable diagnostic devices but if ideas like, doing assay by the software counting a specific shape can be individually patented per shape and are then held ransom by crooked corporations with cooked up patents these devices will be far too expensive to do any good at all.