Slashdot Mirror
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."
[allowing the doctors to easily monitor disease progression and determine the best course of treatment.]
They could use the phone to call for expert help.
This is neat... but this device is probably not going to be useful in the field anytime soon. The tests described were performed on pre-purified, pre-stained, pre-smeared virus. These steps still require a lab to perform. And if you are already in a lab, might as well use a nice microscope. This is the real problem in point-of-care diagnostics, and the reason we don't all have our own personal medical tricorders yet. Big advances are still needed.
...may have benefit where microscopes are useful.
Developments at 11!
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.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
By attaching a lightweight, inexpensive device to the back of a smart phone
By "device", you mean... A fluorescence microscope? Camera works as camera??? Whoah, major breakthrough, dude!
Hey! What do you suppose would happen if, instead of using a $300 phone as a camera (with all its controls inconveniently under the device), we used a $20 USB webcam?
Pinky, bring me the yak!
It certainly is a microscope. It can build up an image out of those dots. The real question is what is the true resolution and are there meaningful applications for that resolution. Plenty of interesting things can be found without high resolution, so there needs to value provide the resolution. Those tiny dots are blurring to about 2 um. Individual cells are roughly 4 to 8 um range. So you can probably spot individual cells. This is a lot more valuable with second image, either transmitted light or a second fluorescent wavelength. With two images you can do % of cells of a certain type. For example, percent of live cells, percent of cells with a specific protein etc. You can probably get reasonable number just by coverage areas even if the cells are not separable. What you can do with a single wavelength is more limited. You can get more accurate counts, Maybe you can develop a two stage assay: Stain for article of interest, Take a picture. Stain for all cells. Now you have %.
"Those tiny dots are blurring to about 2 um. Individual cells are roughly 4 to 8 um range. So you can probably spot individual cells."
Assuming good optics and sufficient magnification, neither of which is inherently a properly of smartphone cameras. It is quite difficult to achieve meaningful resolution down to the photosite level of a sensor and smartphones don't make that a goal.
Talking resolution in the absence and many important details is something a fool would do. Love the hand-waving, though, it matches nicely your previous comment. You are quite the /. engineer.
I attached a football to my smartphone and turned my smartphone into a football.
That's not a fluorescent microscope though.
Fluorescent imaging involves shining excitation light of a specific wavelength at the sample, and filtering out any light but the emission spectrum light. THEN there's the lens. Build your own fluorescent microscope and I'd be impressed. Build your own fluorescent microscope that can fit in your pocket, and that's actually an achievement.
At least, I think it is, compared the usual slashdot stories. "OMG, the next android is going to be named KIT KAT!!!!" Or "Copyright troll... SUES SOMEONE FOR SOMETHING STUPID!!!"
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.
This message was not sent from an iPhone because Peter Sellers really was a deviated prevert without a dime for the call
full ack ... just because you use a smartphone instead of a built-in image sensor does not make stuff groundbreaking ... it just removes parts which everyone has already in his pocket anyhow.
Actually: this system is already in use at least for a bunch of telescopes where you can easily screw on your camera for taking images, and I imagine it is no different with professional microscopes ... so the only thing that actually changes is the adaptor.
Introducing... Instagerm
It seems to me there is information there. A tiny particle blurs to 2 um. Hence it clear that you can't meaningfully distinguish between to particles less then roughly 1 um. http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/diffraction-photography.htm. However, if the particles are 4 um apart I can definitely distinguish them. I am sure I can do this because if I look at the image present, the dot is blurred, meaning there are multiple pixel for the single spot. Sure it is possible the that the image is super zoomed up and what we are seeing is software smoothing of a single pixel or some kind of compression algorithm creating a false sense of resolution. To my eye this does not seem to be the case [yes, very subjective/speculative statement here]. Phone cameras are now boasting 41 MPixel chips http://www.nokia.com/us-en/phones/phone/lumia1020/specifications/ This is a lot higher spacial resolution than most scientific cameras used with fluorescent microscopes so it is not far fetched to expect camera resolution is not the limiting factor. So yes, there is a little bit of assumption that the people who built this thing knew a little bit about what they are doing and are purely "faking" it. With that in mind the basis for my claims is there in the article.
Of course the other post has plenty of hand waving. The only point of that is that there are reasons why the particular implementation may not be stupid, not that I know all the details of what was done.
Building a fluorescence microscope is easy. It's day two or any three of a beginners imaging course.
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