Imaging & identification of malaria parasites using cellphone microscope with a ball lens

Imaging & identification of malaria parasites using cellphone microscope with a ball lens

Agbana, T.E. (TU Delft Team Raf Van de Plas)
Diehl, J.C. (TU Delft Design for Sustainability)
van Pul, Fiona (Leiden University Medical Center)
Khan, Shahid M. (Leiden University Medical Center)
Patlan, Vsevolod (Flexible Optical B.V.)
Verhaegen, M.H.G. (TU Delft Team Raf Van de Plas)
Vdovin, Gleb (TU Delft Team Raf Van de Plas; Flexible Optical B.V.)

2018

We have optimized the design and imaging procedures, to clearly resolve the malaria parasite in Giemsa-stained thin blood smears, using simple low-cost cellphone-based microscopy with oil immersion. The microscope uses a glass ball as the objective and the phone camera as the tube lens. Our optimization includes the optimal choice of the ball lens diameter, the size and the position of the aperture diaphragm, and proper application of immersion, to achieve diagnostic capacity in a wide field of view. The resulting system is potentially applicable to low-cost in-the-field optical diagnostics of malaria as it clearly resolves micron-sized features and allows for analysis of parasite morphology in the field of 50 × 50 μm, and parasite detection in the field of at least 150 × 150 μm.

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:d5010a6d-bd03-47e9-889d-3b2775f73ab6

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0205020

1932-6203

PLoS ONE, 13 (10)

Institutional Repository

journal article

© 2018 T.E. Agbana, J.C. Diehl, Fiona van Pul, Shahid M. Khan, Vsevolod Patlan, M.H.G. Verhaegen, Gleb Vdovin