Abstract
We have optimized the design and imaging procedures, to clearly resolve the malaria parasite in Giemsa-stained thin blood smears, using simple low-cost cellphone-based microscopy with oil immersion. The microscope uses a glass ball as the objective and the phone camera as the tube lens. Our optimization includes the optimal choice of the ball lens diameter, the size and the position of the aperture diaphragm, and proper application of immersion, to achieve diagnostic capacity in a wide field of view. The resulting system is potentially applicable to low-cost in-the-field optical diagnostics of malaria as it clearly resolves micron-sized features and allows for analysis of parasite morphology in the field of 50 × 50 μm, and parasite detection in the field of at least 150 × 150 μm.
Highlights
Malaria is a life threatening disease prevalent in tropical and subtropical countries with high mortality and significant economic loss
Based on World Health Organization (WHO) report, 429,000 death cases were attributed to malaria in the year 2015. 212 million new cases of malaria worldwide was reported in the same year and about 3.2 billion people remain at risk of malaria globally [1]
Cellphone based microscope with a ball lens objective has been optimized for high resolution bright field imaging of malaria parasite in thin blood smears
Summary
Malaria is a life threatening disease prevalent in tropical and subtropical countries with high mortality and significant economic loss. The authors demonstrated the application of the system in the imaging and analysis of malaria infected blood smear, the use of conventional microscope optics and the fabrication of a bulky attachments increases the cost, complexity and required maintenance skills of the instrument. The imaging capability of same technique in the detection of soil helminths in stool sample using a single 3 mm ball lens has been demonstrated in [10] With this technique, achievable spatial resolution is limited by the aberration of the attached optics. A fabricated holographic platform is used as a replacement for the original cell-phone objective lens With this technique, a high field of view without loss in spatial resolution was reported. As the stains are chemically stable, low cost and do not require access to laboratory equipment, they can be rapidly deployed in low resource settings where access to efficient clinical laboratory infrastructure is unavailable
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