Development of Embedded System-Based Lens-Less Microscopy System and Testing on Tissue Samples

Abstract

In this study, a low cost and portable general-purpose lens-less microscopy system suitable for clinical conditions was designed and its performance was increased with the help of image processing algorithms without using numerical approaches. In order to avoid the noises caused by the light source or the imaging sensor, the flat field correction method was applied to the images in real time and then interpolation was applied to the images. The microscopy system is integrated into the embedded system and it is aimed to display in RGB color space. By applying flat field correction and interpolation to the obtained images in real time, the SNR and contrast value of the images were improved. The success of the imaging system was examined with a standard calibration chart. The improvement obtained by calculating the pixel intensity values for pre-processing and post-processing is shown. Various tissue samples were examined with the system and its success on medical samples was demonstrated. It has been shown on tissue samples that the system reaches 2.5 µm resolution in imaging tissue samples. It has been shown that the proposed system can be used for imaging pathological tissues in intraoperative procedures and can reduce the examination time. In addition, the obtained system has the potential to be used in the examination of other micro-sized medical samples.