Abstract
Mobile phone microscopes are a natural platform for point-of-care imaging, but current solutions require an externally powered illumination source, thereby adding bulk and cost. We present a mobile phone microscope that uses the internal flash or sunlight as the illumination source, thereby reducing complexity whilst maintaining functionality and performance. The microscope is capable of both brightfield and darkfield imaging modes, enabling microscopic visualisation of samples ranging from plant to mammalian cells. We describe the microscope design principles, assembly process, and demonstrate its imaging capabilities through the visualisation of unlabelled cell nuclei to observing the motility of cattle sperm and zooplankton.
Highlights
The rapid advancements in imaging capabilities of consumer mobile phones over the last decade have made such devices attractive for point-of-care and resource-poor microscopy applications
The sample is illuminated by an external light source in a particular geometry so as to create a series of holograms, which are captured by the image sensor
Our mobile phone microscope design consists of a 1x magnification imaging system that is created by placing a mobile phone camera lens in front of the mobile phone’s existing internal mobile phone camera module[8]
Summary
The rapid advancements in imaging capabilities of consumer mobile phones over the last decade have made such devices attractive for point-of-care and resource-poor microscopy applications. This basic optical design consisting of a magnifying lens and an external LED forms the basis of the ultra-low-cost Foldscope, made primarily from origami paper[11] Another class of mobile phone microscopes are lens-free devices that image via holography[2,5,12]. Three published exceptions are a lens-free device that uses the sun as an illumination source[5], a brief report that describes the use of diffuse reflection from a slide holder placed behind a sample[9], and an immunoassay device that uses a mirror and optical window to steer light from the flash towards the sample[13] Aside from these three publications, every mobile phone microscope described in the literature features an externally powered LED light source. This, in turn, would necessitate additional optical components (adding cost and bulk), and would defeat the purpose of using the internal flash
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