Abstract
Microscopic examination is the reference diagnostic method for several neglected tropical diseases. However, its quality and availability in rural endemic areas is often limited by the lack of trained personnel and adequate equipment. These drawbacks are closely related with the increasing interest in the development of computer-aided diagnosis systems, particularly distributed solutions that provide access to complex diagnosis in rural areas. In this work we present our most recent advances towards the development of a fully automated 3D-printed smartphone microscope with a motorized stage, termed \(\mu \)SmartScope. The developed prototype allows autonomous acquisition of a pre-defined number of images at 1000x magnification, by using a motorized automated stage fully powered and controlled by a smartphone, without the need of manual focus. In order to validate the prototype as a reliable alternative to conventional microscopy, we evaluated the \(\mu \)SmartScope performance in terms of: resolution; field of view; illumination; motorized stage performance (mechanical movement precision/resolution and power consumption); and automated focus. These results showed similar performances when compared with conventional microscopy, plus the advantage of being low-cost and easy to use, even for non-experts in microscopy. To extract these results, smears infected with blood parasites responsible for the most relevant neglected tropical diseases were used. The acquired images showed that it was possible to detect those agents through images acquired via the \(\mu \)SmartScope, which clearly illustrate the huge potential of this device, specially in developing countries with limited access to healthcare services.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
The END Fund: NTD Overview. http://www.end.org/whatwedo/ntdoverview. Accessed 11 Sept 2017
Utzinger, J., Becker, S.L., Knopp, S., Blum, J., Neumayr, A.L., Keiser, J., Hatz, C.F.: Neglected tropical diseases: diagnosis, clinical management, treatment and control. Swiss Med. Weekly 142 (2012)
Zachary, G.: Technology alone won’t improve health in Africa [Spectral lines]. IEEE Spectr. 52(1), 7 (2015)
Dolgin, E.: Portable pathology for Africa. IEEE Spectr. 52(1), 37–39 (2015)
Rosado, L., da Costa, J.M.C., Elias, D., Cardoso, J.S.: Automated detection of malaria parasites on thick blood smears via mobile devices. Procedia Comput. Sci. 90, 138–144 (2016)
Rosado, L., da Costa, J.M.C., Elias, D., Cardoso, J.S.: Mobile-based analysis of malaria-infected thin blood smears: automated species and life cycle stage determination. Sensors 17, 2167 (2017)
Rosado, L., da Costa, J.M.C., Elias, D., Cardoso, J.S.: A review of automatic malaria parasites detection and segmentation in microscopic images. 14(1), 11–22 (2016). http://www.eurekaselect.com
Rosado, L., Oliveira, J., Vasconcelos, M.J.M., da Costa, J.M.C., Elias, D., Cardoso, J.S.: \(\mu \)SmartScope: 3D-printed smartphone microscope with motorized automated stage. In: Proceedings of the 10th International Joint Conference on Biomedical Engineering Systems and Technologies - Volume 1: BIODEVICES, (BIOSTEC 2017), pp. 38–48. INSTICC, SciTePress (2017)
Tseng, D., Mudanyali, O., Oztoprak, C., Isikman, S.O., Sencan, I., Yaglidere, O., Ozcan, A.: Lensfree microscopy on a cellphone. Lab Chip 10(14), 1787–1792 (2010)
Pirnstill, C.W., Coté, G.L.: Malaria diagnosis using a mobile phone polarized microscope. Sci. Rep. 5, 13368 (2015)
Arpa, A., Wetzstein, G., Lanman, D., Raskar, R.: Single lens off-chip cellphone microscopy, pp. 23–28. IEEE, June 2012
Cybulski, J.S., Clements, J., Prakash, M.: Foldscope: origami-based paper microscope. PLoS ONE 9(6), e98781 (2014)
Smith, Z.J., Chu, K., Espenson, A.R., Rahimzadeh, M., Gryshuk, A., Molinaro, M., Dwyre, D.M., Lane, S., Matthews, D., Wachsmann-Hogiu, S.: Cell-phone-based platform for biomedical device development and education applications. PLoS ONE 6(3), e17150 (2011)
Switz, N.A., D’Ambrosio, M.V., Fletcher, D.A.: Low-cost mobile phone microscopy with a reversed mobile phone camera lens. PLoS ONE 9(5), e95330 (2014)
WHO: Basic malaria microscopy. Number Part 1. World Health Organization (1991)
Budynas, R.G., Nisbett, K.J.: Shigley’s Mechanical Engineering Design, 10th edn. McGraw-Hill Education, New York (2014)
Wakerly, M.: USB Serial for Android (2012)
Krotkov, E.: Focusing. Int. J. Comput. Vis. 1(3), 223–237 (1988)
Shih, L.: Autofocus survey: a comparison of algorithms. In: Electronic Imaging 2007, International Society for Optics and Photonics, p. 65020B (2007)
Sun, Y., Duthaler, S., Nelson, B.J.: Autofocusing algorithm selection in computer microscopy. In: 2005 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, pp. 70–76. IEEE (2005)
Liu, X., Wang, W., Sun, Y.: Dynamic evaluation of autofocusing for automated microscopic analysis of blood smear and pap smear. J. Microsc. 227(1), 15–23 (2007)
Tenenbaum, J.M.: Accommodation in computer vision. Ph.D. dissertation. Technical report, DTIC Document (1970)
Acknowledgements
We would like to acknowledge the financial support from North Portugal Regional Operational Programme (NORTE 2020), Portugal 2020 and the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) from European Union through the project ‘Deus ex Machina: Symbiotic Technology for Societal Efficiency Gains’, NORTE-01-0145-FEDER-000026.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 Springer International Publishing AG, part of Springer Nature
About this paper
Cite this paper
Rosado, L. et al. (2018). \(\mu \)SmartScope: Towards a Fully Automated 3D-Printed Smartphone Microscope with Motorized Stage. In: Peixoto, N., Silveira, M., Ali, H., Maciel, C., van den Broek, E. (eds) Biomedical Engineering Systems and Technologies. BIOSTEC 2017. Communications in Computer and Information Science, vol 881. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-94806-5_2
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-94806-5_2
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-94805-8
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-94806-5
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)