3d printing New 3D-printed clip on lens turns your existing smartphone camera to an optical microscope

[captain_to_fire]

Primary Source: Nature Scientific Reports (free open access)

Secondary Source: ZDNet

 

Quote

A dual-mode mobile phone microscope using the onboard camera flash and ambient light

 

ABSTRACT

Mobile phone microscopes are a natural platform for point-of-care imaging, but current solutions require an externally powered illumination source, thereby adding bulk and cost. We present a mobile phone microscope that uses the internal flash or sunlight as the illumination source, thereby reducing complexity whilst maintaining functionality and performance. The microscope is capable of both brightfield and darkfield imaging modes, enabling microscopic visualisation of samples ranging from plant to mammalian cells. We describe the microscope design principles, assembly process, and demonstrate its imaging capabilities through the visualisation of unlabelled cell nuclei to observing the motility of cattle sperm and zooplankton.

This is one of the things that geeks me out even though not so many in the forum would appreciate unless it's an NVIDIA made microscope. How I wish I had something like this back in college.

Quote

Australian researchers from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Nanoscale BioPhotonics (CNBP) have developed a 3D-printable "clip-on" that turns a smartphone into a fully functional microscope.

 

Reported in Scientific Reports, the clip-on microscope requires no external power or light source and is powerful enough to visualise specimens as small as 1/200th of a millimetre. Examples of this include microscopic organisms, animal and plant cells, blood cells, and cell nuclei. The clip-on features "internal illumination tunnels" that use light from the camera flash to illuminate the sample from behind. This is an improvement on other phone-based microscopes that use external LEDs and other power sources, which are bulkier and difficult to assemble, according to lead developer and CNBP research fellow at RMIT University Dr Anthony Orth. "Ideally, a phone microscope should take advantage of the integrated flash found in nearly every modern mobile, avoiding the need for external lighting and power. It should also be as compact and easy to assemble as possible. It is this design philosophy that inspired us in the development of this add-on clip.

Renderings of the microscope clip Solidworks CAD file. (a) A wireframe overhead view of the clip, showing the illumination tunnels. The blue arrow denotes light exiting the flash, and green arrows indicate diffusely reflected light from the resin backstop (gold). The sample slide is shown in grey, and the lens label indicates the location of the external objective lens when placed inside the objective lens recess. (b) A cross-section view of the clip showing the illumination tunnels, the outside of which are highlighted in blue and green for pre- and post-diffuse reflection tunnels, respectively. Light exiting the flash is first confined to the pre-diffuse reflection tunnel (blue). Light then travels back through the post-diffuse reflection tunnel (green) after which it illuminates the sample. The direction of light in each tunnel is indicated by the coloured arrows. (c) A cross–section of the microscope clip showing the entirety of the illumination tunnels (no longer highlighted in colour). The tunnels intersect at the back of the clip at which point light from the flash encounters a diffusely reflective backstop of cured resin. As in (c), the coloured arrows indicated the direction of light propagation in each tunnel. (d) A rendering of the entire microscope clip. The diffusely reflective backstop is highlighted in gold.

Mobile phone microscope assembly process. (a) Insert mobile phone camera lens (objective lens) into microscope clip as shown. Make sure that the side of the lens assembly that originally faced the image sensor now faces the sample (faces away from the camera). Scale bar approx. 1mm for (a–d). (b) Push objective lens further into the clip until it fits into the recess. (c) Gently push the objective lens assembly into the recess. This can be done with tweezers or by hand. The white boxed region shows the objective lens assembly sitting in the friction-fit recess. (d) Gently squeeze microscope clip so that the opposite sides of the slide holder come into contact. This pushes the objective lens assembly into its final position in the microscope clip recess. (e) Insert sample slide and attach the clip to an iPhone 6s as shown. The objective lens fits directly over the iPhone back camera. Open the iPhone camera app (or other 3^rd party camera app), switch to video mode and activate the flash to view the sample in brightfield mode. In this example, the sample is Lilium ovary (Southern Biological). Exposure time: 1/4808s, ISO 25. (f) Brightfield image of Lilium ovary using “Photo” mode with flash. Scale bar is 1mm. Inset: Magnified image of boxed region. Scale bar is 50 μm.

The Australian researchers are so good they even gave away the 3D printing files publicly for free here.

 

What's good about this aside from the fact that it's free to make is that it doesn't require additional light source other than the phone's LED flash. The researchers used an iPhone 5s and an iPhone 6s which means design-wise it'll work with an iPhone SE, iPhone 6/6+, iPhone 6s+, iPhone 7/7+, and iPhone 8/8+. No word just yet if it's going to work with an iPhone X with a vertical flash or any existing Android phones with the existing design made by the researchers. I'm guessing with a couple of tweaks on the design one might be able to make it work with an iPhone X and Android phone and the good thing is that it's given away for free so no danger from patent infringement claims.

Quote

The native iPhone camera app enables either brightfield (with flash on) or dark field imaging (flash off). An example of a brightfield image of a Lilium ovary (Southern Biological) acquired with the microscope is shown in Fig. 2f. Although the native iPhone camera app sets the camera gain (ISO setting), exposure time and focus automatically, third-party apps are freely available that enable manual tuning of these parameters20. In our experience, the automatic adjustments made by the native iPhone camera app were adequate for routine imaging. Though the image was not always initially in focus when the native iPhone camera app was started, the touch-based auto focusing mechanism was sufficient to find the correct focus plane.

There's no doubt that the iPhone's camera is one of the best out there but even DxO Mark and other tech reviews noted that auto focus is a bit slow in the iPhone even the latest iterations compared to something like the Samsung Galaxy Note 8 which is praised for having the fastest smartphone camera auto focus which I'm guessing a result of combined Phase Detection Autofocus (PDAF) and Contrast detection which somehow Samsung pulled better than Apple. No word if it's okay to use Cedar Wood Oil with this clip on lens for magnifying microorganisms for a much larger magnification. They tested it on cell lines, measuring sperm motility, and zooplankton.

 

The applications of this are astounding as it's cheap and mobile which is useful for scientist in an assignment on a remote place like the Galapagos Islands or the Amazon rain forest where an optical microscope will provide inconvenience as it requires a flat surface and can be heavy not to mention they cost $200 to $300. Remote doctors assigned to do medical missions in war torn areas or in untouched mountainous places can use something like this to diagnose parasitic infections. To diagnose a worm infestation, a doctor would either request for a fecal smear or a Scotch tape test where the sticky end of the tape is placed in the anus and peeled, folded and viewed in a microscope to view the presence of eggs or worms.

Spoiler

It can be used by veterinarians to diagnosed infections from animals while they're in the wild like Trichinosis and others. I was surprised that the researchers managed to make it work on cell lines because magnifying live cells don't require a glass slide but a cell culture flask. Since a smartphone is used, it can be immediately uploaded to the internet which I think useful for students majoring in life sciences where they can paste an image of a slide to One Note or Evernote and immediately add a description. But I don't think it will replace compound light microscopes in laboratories anytime soon for a couple of reasons:

1. A smartphone can be a source of contamination
2. A smartphone must be disinfected before and after especially when viewing potentially pathogenic organisms
3. It's possible to use a 3D printed add on lens for Biosafety Level 1, not so much with BSL 2 onwards.

But for anyone who has a 3D printer and is into studying life sciences, this one is a very nice tool to make to have a mobile lab and do research papers about novel microorganisms or make educational materials like the ones below.

 

[Beskamir]

Neat!

[Maslofski]

time to snapchat the powerhouse of the cell

[Bananasplit_00]

This is pretty cool, would be a really good educational thing too to have in the classroom. 3D printing makes it fairy chap too

[Tech_Dreamer]

Very nice .

[goodtofufriday]

Where can i buy one

[Shreyas1]

I've heard there are ways to make microscopes like this, only not as powerful. I think it was in the make magazine some time ago

[ADM-Ntek]

1 hour ago, Shreyas1 said:

I've heard there are ways to make microscopes like this, only not as powerful. I think it was in the make magazine some time ago

similar 

 

[Murasaki]

nerdgasm

[kennethnakasone]

So I happened to have the stuff necessary to try this (a phone to salvage parts from, and a 3D printer), so I tried it out.

 

Here's some pictures:

Salvaged Camera

Spoiler

Printed Microscope:

Spoiler

Microscope Pictures:

Spoiler

Scrap Raft (from Printing):

 

Some Random Yellow Paper:

 

Target Receipt:

 

Brown Paper Towel:

 

 

[captain_to_fire]

2 hours ago, kennethnakasone said:

So I happened to have the stuff necessary to try this (a phone to salvage parts from, and a 3D printer), so I tried it out.

 

Here's some pictures:

Salvaged Camera

  Hide contents

Printed Microscope:

  Hide contents

Microscope Pictures:

  Hide contents

Scrap Raft (from Printing):

 

Some Random Yellow Paper:

 

Target Receipt:

 

Brown Paper Towel:

 

 

Nice!