Microscope on a chip could be implantable
Last Friday's Science Friday on NPR featured a really exciting segment on a "microscope on a chip," an ingenious, $10 method for building a microscope using a digital camera controller. The 17-minute segment runs through a number of potential applications for this, from cellphone microscopes that could autonomously identify hazardous bacteria in water samples (for cameraphones, the cost of implementing microscope functionality is about $1), to implanting cancer-detecting scopes in high-risk patients, to putting hundreds of microscopes on a single chip for massively parallel sampling and testing.
Micro Microscope (broadcast Friday, August 1st, 2008)
Researchers have developed a micro-microscope. Writing in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, scientists at Caltech describe the creation of an on-chip, lens-free microscope that they say could be built for about ten dollars. The device uses a screen of tiny holes mounted above a CCD sensor to image liquids flowing through microscopic channels in the chip. Such a microscope chip could provide high-resolution microscopic images in field instruments for tasks such as blood screening and water testing. We'll talk with one of the inventors of the device about its potential uses
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would be cool to have had this on the phoenix lander!
As someone who needs a microscope, I'm wondering where one might find some sample images from this device. How do they look?
(MAKE magazine recently published a DIY version of this same thing, using a webcam. The resolution isn't so impressive on it, but hey, it's a webcam, what do you want...)
Can I get one implanted in my palm, hooked up to an LCD screen on the back of my hand? :D
I am wondering why they need the piece of metal with tiny holes in it to separate the sample from the sensor chip. It will be difficult to align these holes with the pixels on then sensor chip. This will result in reduced resolution. Why not just use a piece of glass / plastic / or some other transparent material?
Dainel #4, I heard this segment on NPR, and though I can't precisely explain it, the tiny holes are critical to the small size of the microscope. The tiny holes allow the elimination of the use of a magnification lens, because the holes and the liquid flowing around them substitute for a lens in some bizarre way. Sorry I can't explain any more technically than that, though I was definitely intrigued when I heard about it.
I imagine it works like a camera with multiple pinholes. The alignment of the holes would not be important, only their size and spacing.
The Tricorder sensor suite gets closer to having an ECG book #. We used to speculate on "telesensory" hardware elements becoming disposably cheap and the "Pill Camera" proved us right. Now it might be refitted with this for lab work on the way down?
ubiquitous distributed bio-sensors that self-dial when weaponized organisms are detected
ubiquitous distributed bio-sensors that self-dial when your dead skin cells are detected
you need to shower more
You know? I'll LOVE a cellphone with a microscope function. If the images from the microscope could be stored as a photo... well, my inner child wants that for Xmas!
@#11 Taking picture of your unborn child while it's still a blastocyst? BRILLIANT!
It all seems quite complex - until you remember that the earliest microscopes used droplets of water as lens substitutes. You can do this yourself using a bit of fine wire to make a little loop (wrap it around a toothpick or a pencil) and dip it in water.
After these came the use of bits of glass, and then compound microscopes. But first, it was just water.
There is no reason that any vaguely transparent liquid couldn't be used to produce its own lens. All you need is a hole of the appropriate size (tiny) and a way to lightly pull or push the liquid around the hole (using a bit of vacuum, heat or more likely electrostatics) to alter the focus.
This was patented previously for use in cameras, and thus won't appear in stuff until the patent expires.
what are midiclorians?
I welcome our new implanted surveillance cameras! All Hail our micro-observing overlords. (Coming soon: spin-cams. Do you know where your electrons are right now?)