Phone Gadget to Diagnose Disease, creates Portable Healthcare Clinic

July 22, 2009 - 6:13 am | 8 views

Technology.am (July 22, 2009) — Researchers have developed an add-on to a mobile phone that is able to take detailed images and analyse them to diagnose diseases like tuberculosis.

Diagnose-Disease The add-on CellScope is made up of conventional microscope optics as well as some equipment to make it function as a fluorescence microscope.

The CellScope uses cheap commercial light-emitting diodes as the light source – in place of the high-power, gas-filled lamps used in laboratory versions of the device, and cheap optical filters to isolate the light coming from the fluorescent tags.

The device has a resolution of just over one millionth of a metre, and the team was able to identify tuberculosis bacteria in a sample. Tuberculosis diagnosis requires a fluorescence microscope, which can illuminate a blood sample that has been treated with “tagging” molecules and detect just the light that those molecules emit with great sensitivity. Several other tagging molecules are in development to address the diagnosis of other diseases.

The researchers used a standard Nokia handset with a 3.2 megapixel camera, developing a “snap-on” addition that includes the microscope optics and a holder for blood samples on glass slides.

Upon the removal of the filters, they were able to use the CellScope as a standard, white-light microscope, identifying malaria parasites and the misshapen cells typical of sickle cell anaemia.

However, typical fluorescence microscopes are bulky, expensive devices limited to hospitals and laboratories.

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