Compact and Cost-Effective Lensless Telemedicine Microscopy for Global Health Applications

Abstract

We demonstrate a telemedicine microscopy platform which operates based on lensfree digital holography. It utilizes an incoherent light-source and an opto-electronic sensor-array to record lensfree holograms of micro-objects within a sample, which are then rapidly processed using custom-developed algorithms to provide microscopic images of the samples without the use of any lenses, lasers or other bulky optical/mechanical components. This holographic-microscope achieves sub-cellular resolution over a field-of-view of ~24 mm 2 which is >20 fold larger than a typical 10X objective-lens field-of-view. We implemented this lensfree microscopy platform on a compact stand-alone unit (~46 grams with dimensions of ~4.2 x 4.2 x 5.8 cm) as well as on a commercially-available cell-phone which is modified with a light-weight attachment (~38 grams). The imaging performance of these lensfree telemedicine-microscopes is demonstrated using several micro-objects including blood cells and water-borne parasites.