Single lens off-chip cellphone microscopy

Abstract

Within the last few years, cellphone subscriptions have widely spread and now cover even the remotest parts of the planet. Adequate access to healthcare, however, is not widely available, especially in developing countries. We propose a new approach to converting cellphones into low-cost scientific devices for microscopy. Cellphone microscopes have the potential to revolutionize health-related screening and analysis for a variety of applications, including blood and water tests. Our optical system is more flexible than previously proposed mobile microscopes and allows for wide field of view panoramic imaging, the acquisition of parallax, and coded background illumination, which optically enhances the contrast of transparent and refractive specimens.