Portable, battery-operated, low-cost, bright field and fluorescence microscope.
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.
Miller
Andrew R
AR
Beyond Traditional Borders, Rice University, Houston, Texas, USA. andymill@gmail.com
Davis
Gregory L
GL
Oden
Z Maria
ZM
Razavi
Mohamad Reza
MR
Fateh
Abolfazl
A
Ghazanfari
Morteza
M
Abdolrahimi
Farid
F
Poorazar
Shahin
S
Sakhaie
Fatemeh
F
Olsen
Randall J
RJ
Bahrmand
Ahmad Reza
AR
Pierce
Mark C
MC
Graviss
Edward A
EA
Richards-Kortum
Rebecca
R
D011211:Electric Power Supplies; D006801:Humans; D008029:Lighting / Q000379:methods*; D008856:Microscopy, Fluorescence / Q000191:economics* / Q000295:instrumentation*; D009169:Mycobacterium tuberculosis / Q000302:isolation & purification; D013183:Sputum / Q000382:microbiology