A group of doctors and biophysicists at the University of California have built a device that could mean better medical care at home and in underdeveloped countries. CellScope is a cellphone that serves as a medical microscope.
"Here we have several drops of blood that have been pressed onto a glass slide." The man pointing to the screen of his notebook computer is Dr. Wilbur Lam, a Pediatric Oncologist. The image he is examining indicates malaria. It was photographed by an ordinary mobile phone.
Say you're in a remote or undeveloped part of the world, and you need to diagnose an illness. Even if you could find a microscope, you don't have a doctor to look through it. But you do have a cellphone. What if you could attach the phone to the microscope, call clinician halfway around the world and have her use her mobile phone see what yours sees? That's the idea behind CellScope.
"We clip it into a modified belt-holder," explains Dan Fletcher, Associate Professor of Bioengineering at UC Berkeley. "to which we have attached a system of lenses, and a small adjustment piece that allows us to move a sample and to focus it in the microscope."
His team of researchers has used other off-the-shelf parts to hold the cost down to less than $50. It began as a simple class project for graduate students in Fletcher's lab. "I think just a few years ago, it would not make sense to try something like this," he adds. "It really has been the growth of wireless networks worldwide, and in particular — if we think about developing countries — the fact that wireless networks are ubiquitous in many areas."
Using bluetooth, wi-fi and cellular networks, the phones need no modification. Capable of 100x magnification today, the devices could provide twice that soon. A smaller prototype even features its own light source.
"This could be useful even at home, where early warnings of a change in the shape of a mole could be sent to your clinician on a regular basis to monitor," adds Fletcher.
In addition, cancer patients could assist in conducting their own blood cell counts that today require larger microscopes and particle counters, according to Dr. Lam, who also is Grad Student working with Fletcher.
"By no means do we think this is going to replace those large particle counters," he says. "It's just a good adjunct for the patient to have at home." Support comes in part by awards from Microsoft, the Blum Center for Developing Economies, and the Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society (CITRIS). The Blum Center is already using phones to collect medical information in parts of Africa.
A simple use of existing technology. Yet it is something to phone home about.
Related Links
Biomolecular Polymer Opto-Electronics Group
CITRIS - California Institutes for Science and Innovation
Fletcher Lab
Blum Center for Developing Economies
Microsoft Cellphone in Health Care Project Daniel Fletcher Personal Page
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