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Improved smartphone microscope brings single-virus detection to remote locations

Date:
September 25, 2013
Source:
American Chemical Society
Summary:
Scientists are reporting an advance in smartphone-based imaging that could help physicians in far-flung and resource-limited locations monitor how well treatments for infections are working by detecting, for the first time, individual viruses. Their study on the light-weight device converts the phone into a powerful mini-microscope.
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Scientists are reporting an advance in smartphone-based imaging that could help physicians in far-flung and resource-limited locations monitor how well treatments for infections are working by detecting, for the first time, individual viruses. Their study on the light-weight device, which converts the phone into a powerful mini-microscope, appears in the journal ACS Nano.

Aydogan Ozcan and colleagues note that conventional imaging techniques for detecting disease-causing bacteria and viruses rely on expensive microscopes with multiple lenses and other bulky optical components. In places with limited resources, doctors have few options for determining how well a treatment is working. To address the need for more portable and less expensive medical equipment, researchers, including Ozcan's group at the University of California, Los Angeles, recently have developed various compact microscopes that can be fitted onto smartphones to detect microbes or to check patients' eyesight. The team set out to build on these advances and produce a more refined imaging device that works on the nanoscale to count the number of sub-micron bacteria or viruses in a sample.

The result is a portable imaging system that harnesses the digital power of today's smartphones to detect individual viruses and determine viral load -- the severity of infection -- which can indicate the effectiveness of a treatment. It only weighs six-and-a-half ounces, or little more than a baseball. Using their new smartphone microscope, the scientists detected individual, fluorescently labeled human cytomegalovirus, a member of the herpes virus family that can be life-threatening in patients with low immunity. It's also one of the leading causes of virus-associated birth defects. The scientists conclude that the microscope "holds significant promise for various point-of-care applications such as viral load measurements or other biomedical tests conducted in remote or resource-limited environments."


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Journal Reference:

  1. Qingshan Wei, Hangfei Qi, Wei Luo, Derek Tseng, So Jung Ki, Zhe Wan, Zoltán Göröcs, Laurent A. Bentolila, Ting-Ting Wu, Ren Sun, Aydogan Ozcan. Fluorescent Imaging of Single Nanoparticles and Viruses on a Smart Phone. ACS Nano, 2013; 130912121543008 DOI: 10.1021/nn4037706

Cite This Page:

American Chemical Society. "Improved smartphone microscope brings single-virus detection to remote locations." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 25 September 2013. <www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/09/130925130652.htm>.
American Chemical Society. (2013, September 25). Improved smartphone microscope brings single-virus detection to remote locations. ScienceDaily. Retrieved March 28, 2024 from www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/09/130925130652.htm
American Chemical Society. "Improved smartphone microscope brings single-virus detection to remote locations." ScienceDaily. www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/09/130925130652.htm (accessed March 28, 2024).

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