Tissue sample image created by a new lens-free microscope developed in the UCLA lab of Aydogan Ozcan.
The lab of Dr. Aydogan Ozcan at UCLA seems like an ever-flowing wellspring of new optical gadgets that can be used in biomedical applications. Yesterday we reported on a new fluorescence imaging smartphone attachment developed by Ozcan et. al. that can be used to spot and measure DNA strands, and in the past we’ve covered other technologies the team developed to count cells, holographic processing to analyze them, and high-res 3D imaging of samples on a tiny chip.
Today we learn of a new study published by the researchers in Science Translational Medicine describing a new lens-free microscopy technique that allows for wide-field viewing of pathology slides using a small, cheap, and portable device. The device creates a holographically reconstructed image the objects within which can be brought into focus at any depth following the image capture. Unlike normal optical microscopes, this does not require any mechanical components to move the lens, making image capture nearly automatic.
From the study abstract in Science Translational Medicine:
Using this lens-free on-chip microscope, we successfully imaged invasive carcinoma cells within human breast sections, Papanicolaou smears revealing a high-grade squamous intraepithelial lesion, and sickle cell anemia blood smears over a FOV of 20.5 mm2. The resulting wide-field lens-free images had sufficient image resolution and contrast for clinical evaluation, as demonstrated by a pathologist’s blinded diagnosis of breast cancer tissue samples, achieving an overall accuracy of ~99%. By providing high-resolution images of large-area pathology samples with 3D digital focus adjustment, lens-free on-chip microscopy can be useful in resource-limited and point-of-care settings.
Study abstract in Science Translational Medicine: Wide-field computational imaging of pathology slides using lens-free on-chip microscopy…
Press release: Lens-free microscope can detect cancer at the cellular level…