Parasitic worms are still a serious health problem in many parts of our world. Rapidly diagnosing the disease can speed up its care and help stop the transmission. The reality of the situation is that places suffer from tapeworms tend to have few path labs available. A team of international researchers headed by engineers at University of California, Berkeley have created a fully automated smartphone-based monitor that can detect parasitic worms in a drop of blood.
The system works with the CellScope smartphone microscope attachment (see our interview with CellScope co-founder Amy Sheng), but in addition to being able to visualize blood at high resolution, it also performs visual recognition to identify the worms. This is done simply with a pin prick of blood placed on a small capillary pipette, which is the placed inside a box with an LED light and the phone’s camera looking down onto the sample. Check out this short video to see it in action:
Flashbacks: Interview with CellScope Co-Founder Amy Sheng; The Latest on Cellscope’s Smartphone-Based Microscope and Otoscope…
Source: UC Berkeley…
(hat tip: Engadget)