Cheshire

A New York Times article discusses how to rig your cellphone into some damn nifty tools:

“We convert cellphones into devices that diagnose diseases,” said Aydogan Ozcan, an assistant professor of electrical engineering and member of the California NanoSystems Institute at the University of California, Los Angeles, who created the devices. He has formed a company, Microskia, to commercialize the technology.

The adapted phones may be used for screening in places far from hospitals, technicians or diagnostic laboratories, Dr. Ozcan said.

In one prototype, a slide holding a finger prick of blood can be inserted over the phone’s camera sensor. The sensor detects the slide’s contents and sends the information wirelessly to a hospital or regional health center. For instance, the phones can detect the asymmetric shape of diseased blood cells or other abnormal cells, or note an increase of white blood cells, a sign of infection, he said.

Really…as an aspiring entomologist and blogger, you have no idea how frusterating it is that cellphones don’t have macrophotography abilities.

Here’s how it’s done:

For this electronic system of magnification, inexpensive light-emitting diodes added to the basic cellphone shine their light on a sample slide placed over the phone’s camera chip. Some of the light waves hit the cells suspended in the sample, scattering off the cells and interfering with the other light waves.

Basically, do you ever see small transparent circles floating in midair throughout the day? Those are red blood cells on the tops of your lenses. This *seems* to work in the same manner.

Here is the website for the company mentioned in the article. Unfortunately, it looks like it’s not up and running yet.

Hopefully, they make something for blackberries.