Title |
Portable, Battery-Operated, Low-Cost, Bright Field and Fluorescence Microscope
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Published in |
PLOS ONE, August 2010
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DOI | 10.1371/journal.pone.0011890 |
Pubmed ID | |
Authors |
Andrew R. Miller, Gregory L. Davis, Z. Maria Oden, Mohamad Reza Razavi, Abolfazl Fateh, Morteza Ghazanfari, Farid Abdolrahimi, Shahin Poorazar, Fatemeh Sakhaie, Randall J. Olsen, Ahmad Reza Bahrmand, Mark C. Pierce, Edward A. Graviss, Rebecca Richards-Kortum |
Abstract |
This study describes the design and evaluation of a portable bright-field and fluorescence microscope that can be manufactured for $240 USD. The microscope uses a battery-operated LED-based flashlight as the light source and achieves a resolution of 0.8 microm at 1000x magnification in fluorescence mode. We tested the diagnostic capability of this new instrument to identify infections caused by the human pathogen, Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Sixty-four direct, decontaminated, and serially diluted smears were prepared from sputa obtained from 19 patients suspected to have M. tuberculosis infection. Slides were stained with auramine orange and evaluated as being positive or negative for M. tuberculosis with both the new portable fluorescence microscope and a laboratory grade fluorescence microscope. Concordant results were obtained in 98.4% of cases. This highly portable, low cost, fluorescence microscope may be a useful diagnostic tool to expand the availability of M. tuberculosis testing at the point-of-care in low resource settings. |
X Demographics
Geographical breakdown
Country | Count | As % |
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Germany | 1 | 50% |
United Kingdom | 1 | 50% |
Demographic breakdown
Type | Count | As % |
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Members of the public | 2 | 100% |
Mendeley readers
Geographical breakdown
Country | Count | As % |
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United States | 7 | 4% |
Bulgaria | 1 | <1% |
Kenya | 1 | <1% |
Brazil | 1 | <1% |
South Africa | 1 | <1% |
India | 1 | <1% |
Australia | 1 | <1% |
Canada | 1 | <1% |
United Kingdom | 1 | <1% |
Other | 2 | 1% |
Unknown | 145 | 90% |
Demographic breakdown
Readers by professional status | Count | As % |
---|---|---|
Student > Ph. D. Student | 41 | 25% |
Researcher | 30 | 19% |
Student > Master | 15 | 9% |
Student > Bachelor | 14 | 9% |
Professor | 8 | 5% |
Other | 26 | 16% |
Unknown | 28 | 17% |
Readers by discipline | Count | As % |
---|---|---|
Engineering | 46 | 28% |
Agricultural and Biological Sciences | 23 | 14% |
Medicine and Dentistry | 9 | 6% |
Chemistry | 9 | 6% |
Physics and Astronomy | 8 | 5% |
Other | 36 | 22% |
Unknown | 31 | 19% |