A $1.

50 Lens-Free Microscope
Technology Review, Friday October 22, 2010

In many areas of the developing world, quality of medical diagnosis and treatment is limited by the lack of available diagnostic tools. Factors such as prohibitively high cost, lack of portability, and high resource input requirements of diagnostic tools often result in late disease diagnosis or failure to deliver test results to patients. Scientists at Caltech have developed a lens-free microscope that has the ability to produce an image equivalent to that of a 20 times magnification light microscope, using only a $1.50 digital camera sensor. In order to capture the image, a liquid sample is led over a light-sensing chip by microscopic channels called microfluidics. The chip captures 300 frames per second, and then assembles them into a high-definition video using an algorithm which maximizes the resolution of the images. By assembling images into a video, the user is able to take advantage of the fact that cells tend to roll end over end as they pass through a microfluidic channel. This is especially important for aiding in the diagnosis of malaria, which is characterized by the deformation of blood cells. In the future, with the development of a higher resolution sensor, this lens-free microscope could be used to automatically diagnose malaria when connected to a smart phone. This would remove the need for labour-intensive screening of blood samples with light microscopes, while providing instant feedback. While I am aware that factors such as lack of medical personnel, lack of roads, and lack of infrastructure are major barriers to quick, effective medical diagnosis, I believe that implementation of an inexpensive, effective tool such as this could potentially very positively affect the timely treatment of illness in developing areas.

Mims, C. 2010. A $1.50 lens-free microscope. Technology Review. Web. 28 Sept. 2011. <http://www.technologyreview.com/biomedicine/26610/>.