Fairfax, VA, USA. Engineers have developed a cell phone that includes a microscope among its capabilities. The lensless imaging platform behind the microscope is nearly readiness for real world trials.

Cell phones have accumulated capabilities at a rapid rate, acting as cameras, schedulers, and internet access devices. The prototype cell phone microscope could become an essential part of mobile and/or remote medical lab.

Developing countries generally lack an effective health care infrastructure, including buildings and trained personnel.

The engineers hope to leverage the fact that eighty percent of the world's population lives in areas covered by cell phone networks. This can bridge gaps on the infrastructure. For telemedicine tools to effectively fill in for hospitals, the devices have to meet several criteria. They must be cheap enough for widespread use in poor areas, be simple enough for a minimally trained person to correctly operate, and be able to easily transmit information over existing cellular networks.

Cell Phone Microscope. (a) Lensless microscope attached to a cell phone. (b) Schematic diagram of the microscope attachment.

Click Pic for Details

Optical microscopes, a key diagnostic tool in hospitals, are too bulky for telemedicine applications. "Cell phones present a tremendous opportunity in Global healthcare," remarked Ozcan, an assistant professor of electrical engineering at the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science and a researcher at the UCLA California NanoSystems Institute. The new device is featured in the journal Lab on a Chip.

In optical microscopes, one of the elements which limits the miniaturization possibilities and drives up the cost is the lens. Ozcan's telemedicine microscope avoids both these constraints by capturing an image with a lensless system. This means that the microscope can be miniaturized (it only weighs ~1.5 ounces) to the point where it fits on most cell phones, while remaining inexpensive enough for widespread use in developing countries, costing only about ten dollars each.

Images are captured through a process called diffraction, or shadow-based, imaging. An ordinary light-emitting diode (LED) from the top illuminates the sample, and the detector array already installed in cell phone cameras captures the image, recording the patterns created by the shadows resulting from the LED light scattering off of the cells in the sample. Because cells are semi-transparent, enough information is obtained from this type of imaging to detect sub-cellular elements, and to produce holographic images.

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Cell Phone Microscope

Aydogan Ozcan is a Professor of Electrical Engineering at the UCLA California NanoSystems Institute. Aydogan Ozcan is recognized as one of the world's top innovators for his work, most recently the lens free imaging platform and its implications in wireless health. This video follows Ozcan around the UCLA campus as he discusses wireless health and demonstrates detecting malaria, tuberculosis, and other diseases with a cellphone.

Video courtesy of the UCLA California NanoSystems Institute. Time: 00:01:58.

By using an inexpensive LED light instead of a laser as typically required for holographic imaging, the size and cost are further reduced.

The cell phone microscope is also easy to use, and versatile. Samples (blood smears or saliva) are loaded into single-use chips that easily slide into the side of the microscope.

Because the microscope uses the entire detector array to capture an image and has a relatively large aperture, it has a wide imaging field-of-view.

Samples do not need to be precisely aligned for images to be captured, and the chance of debris clogging the light source is lessened. Alternate uses of the technology include testing water quality in the field following a disaster like a hurricane or earthquake.

The lensless imaging platform is an ideal telemedicine tool because it is so easily integrated with cell phones, which are becoming cheaper to produce while gaining sophistication. Even base models in developing countries often have cameras.

Ozcan's group developed an algorithm that instantly identifies and counts red and white blood cells and microparticles in samples, a time consuming process typically done by trained technicians. The image results are then sent by the cell phone to centralized hospitals for analysis by doctors.

As an alternative for people whose cell phones don't have built-in cameras, Ozcan's group also created a standalone lensless microscope that only requires a USB connection for power and to upload the captured shadow images to either a laptop or cell phone for transmission.

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