Researchers at the University of Illinois have developed a diagnostic biosensor that uses a smartphone camera as a spectrometer.
(Credit: Department of Bioengineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)
According to the Illinois team, the spectral transmission-reflectance-intensity (TRI)-Analyser costs just $550. It can be used to test blood, urine, or saliva samples, with results comparable to clinic-based instruments that cost thousands of dollars.
“Our TRI Analyser is like the Swiss Army knife of biosensing,” said Brian Cunningham, a bioengineering and electrical & computer engineering professor at Illinois.
“It’s capable of performing the three most common types of tests in medical diagnostics, so in practice, thousands of already-developed tests could be adapted to it.”
The device operates by converting the smartphone camera into a high-performance spectrometer. It illuminates a sample fluid with the phone’s internal white LED flash or an external green laser diode. The light from the sample is collected in an optical fibre and passed through a diffraction grating into the phone’s rear-facing internal camera.
These optical components are all arranged within a 3D-printed plastic cradle. Using a microfluidic cartridge that slides through an opening in the back of the cradle, the TRI Analyser can measure multiple samples successively.
“The TRI Analyser is more of a portable laboratory than a specialised device,” said MD/PhD student Kenny Long, lead author of the study, which appears in the journal Lab on a Chip.
“Our Analyser can scan many tests in a sequence by swiping the cartridge past the readout head, in a similar manner to the way magnetic strip credit cards are swiped.”
The researchers claim the device’s portability makes it suitable for patients who lack clinical access or for those in emergency health situations that require immediate results. In addition to its applications in health diagnostics, Cunningham said the Analyser could also be applied to point-of-use applications including animal health, environmental monitoring, drug testing, manufacturing quality control and food safety.
Holy shades of Star Trek Tricorder, Batman! This is gonna go places, for sure.
Just like the invention of the computer, and it’s rapid evolution into everyman’s personal computer, are hugely significant waypoints in the ongoing industrial revolution, so too must the invention and development of the smartphone stand out as one of the defining inventions of the 21st century.
That this one small and simple device can provide – in the palm of the user’s hand – a cornucopia of fantastical properties and everyday uses that would have been perceived as nothing less than magic or witchcraft just a few hundred years ago, is nothing short of stupendous.
I often wonder what Alexander Bell, the inventor of the telephone – or even the engineers at Motorola, who made the first cellphone, would make of the possibilities today that their first footsteps years ago have led to?
And what about the Harrisons and their famous chronometers, and what momentous developments that work had enabled (the safe exploration of the rest of the world, for one). “No, Mr Harrison, your clocks are primitive and have no comparison. Here, inside this piece of plastic (don’t ask!) lies a machine that is accurate to ten-thousandths of a second, and nor do you have to engage in tedious and difficult cartographical calculations. This is all done all automatically and presented – instantaneously – on a graphical map display that even a simple landlubber can understand. And this magical instrument is not a precious and secret rarity available only to kings and queens and the Admirality, but is availed to the most lowly citizen of the land!!”
In the years ahead, what will this magical device be doing next?
Like Harrison and Bell, it seems impossible to comprehend the future possibilities, except to know that it surely promises to be both unimaginable – and stupendous.
Some of the rather long-winded words used to describe this item and its capabilities remind me of the description: “a solar powered, wind-assisted, tension-ed, externally positioned, water extraction and disposal device.” [ to you and I, a washing line!]
“We stand on the shoulders of Giants to see the future!”
“We are all children, picking-up pebbles (of knowledge) from its sea-shore, which are replaced by every wave and tide.”
Sir Isaac Newton , re-defined!
I can only again define these advances as remarkable: and more importantly, surely hasten that blessed day when “the earth shall be filled with the glory of Thee (and here thee is surely technologee) as the waters cover the sea!”
“as nothing less than magic or witchcraft just a few hundred years ago,”
Bl**dy good job that the Church, and much of the nastier aspects of the control of society that those other groups who still wear ‘fancy dress’ … have been eclipsed by technology. Its only 400 years ago since ‘we’ (actually they) burned witches, excommunicated Galileo, for telling the truth and applied the Inquisition to anyone who thought outside their box!