title: Portable, battery-operated, low-cost, bright field and fluorescence microscope.
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.
authors.affiliation: Beyond Traditional Borders, Rice University, Houston, Texas, USA. andymill@gmail.com
authors.forename: Andrew R
authors.initials: AR
authors.lastname: Miller
authors.forename: Gregory L
authors.initials: GL
authors.lastname: Davis
authors.forename: Z Maria
authors.initials: ZM
authors.lastname: Oden
authors.forename: Mohamad Reza
authors.initials: MR
authors.lastname: Razavi
authors.forename: Abolfazl
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Fateh
authors.forename: Morteza
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Ghazanfari
authors.forename: Farid
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Abdolrahimi
authors.forename: Shahin
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Poorazar
authors.forename: Fatemeh
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Sakhaie
authors.forename: Randall J
authors.initials: RJ
authors.lastname: Olsen
authors.forename: Ahmad Reza
authors.initials: AR
authors.lastname: Bahrmand
authors.forename: Mark C
authors.initials: MC
authors.lastname: Pierce
authors.forename: Edward A
authors.initials: EA
authors.lastname: Graviss
authors.forename: Rebecca
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Richards-Kortum
mesh_terms: 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