Friday, 7 October 2011

Turning The apple iphone Right Into A 350x Medical Microscope For Less Than $50

While using apple iphone (or any mobile smartphone or tablet device, really) for medical reasons isn t a brand new factor, however it s nice to determine the programs people prepare up. Just lately at Disrupt we had Smartheart, and applications like Skin Scan are decentralizing some simple self-monitoring tasks like melanoma recognition.

We ve also seen plenty of physical inclusions in the apple iphone camera. You will get wide-position contacts, telephotos, or even a 12x microscope lens. But a team of scientists at UC Davis has one-upped your competition by looking into making the apple iphone right into a 350x microscope for really low cost. You now ll have the ability to send people Instagrams of the bloodstream cells.

It ought to be stated quickly the softball bat this isn t something which only the apple iphone can perform. However it s a tight schedule-to device for evidence of concept that for apparent reasons.

The project is really a significant simple little hack. They will use a 1mm ball lens and fix it towards the outdoors from the apple iphone lens array having a rubber sheet plus some tape. The small lens technically only offers 5x zoom, but the actual way it focuses produces a small in-focus area that may resolve particulars lower to around 1.5 microns. The area of view is extremely small , there s distortion to cope with, but by mixing the in-focus regions of several pictures you can aquire a obvious enough image to recognize cell types, make counts, as well as take spectroscopic blood pressure measurements.

Have a look at these images: those on top were taken having a full-on commercial medical microscope, those at the base come from the apple iphone setup:

There s clearly a significant difference in quality, however the difference in cost is increased, and-quality microscopes aren t very mobile.

Basically this is yet another step towards a tricorder. Having a general-purpose CPU, modular inputs, along with a versatile imaging unit, the smartphone is helpful for a lot a lot more than calling buddies and playing Angry Wild birds. It might not be considered a mobile clinic, however in places that money and electricity are tricky to find, an apple iphone might be a valuable diagnostic tool. Stretching the senses in our products via cheap components and hard work could seriously empower decentralized health care.

Read the entire paper here. The research was funded through the NSF.



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