3D-printed smartphone microscope magnifies up to 1/200th of a millimeter

By Warren Miller, contributing writer

Contemporary cellular phones can perform a seemingly endless variety of functions, from taking photographs and videos to guiding people through rush hour traffic. You may not even be aware of this, but with certain attachments, your phone can also become a powerful microscope. Heretofore, these attachments have been larger and more cumbersome than the phone itself, but a group of Australian researchers have developed a microscope attachment that doesn’t require an additional power supply or external light sources.

The team from Australia’s Centre of Excellence for Nanoscale BioPhotonics (CNBP) designed their device for doctors and scientists operating in remote areas of the world. “Powerful microscopes can be few and far between in some regions,” said Anthony Orth, lead developer on the project. “They’re often only found in larger population centers and not in remote or smaller communities, yet their use in these areas can be essential for determining water quality for drinking, analyzing blood samples for parasites, or for disease diagnosis — including malaria.”

Australian researchers developed the clip-on device that requires no external light or power sources. Image source: CNBP.

Previous iterations of phone-based microscope attachments required battery packs and light sources, making them inconvenient for researchers working in the field. The CNBP device draws power from the phone itself and uses the phone’s flashlight to illuminate the microscope’s viewable field. The microscopic lens clips on to the back of your cellphone, magnifying whatever you would be seeing through your phone’s camera. “We’ve designed a simple mobile phone microscope that takes advantage of the integrated illumination available with nearly all smartphone cameras,” said Orth. “External LEDs and power sources can make these other systems surprisingly complex, bulky, and difficult to assemble.”

The microscope attachment is capable of viewing objects as small as 1/200^th of a millimeter, making it significantly more effective than its more cumbersome predecessors. Additionally, the device can be replicated by anyone with a 3D printer, as the CNBP team have made the specifications freely available to the public. 

It’s interesting to speculate on how a widely available and opensource cellphone microscope could be used if additional processing power and big data analytics were applied. Could large numbers of volunteer researchers capture data on water quality, air quality, and other health-related data via microscopic videos and then share them for big data analytics to use to spot trends or warning signs of impending health risks? How about amateur biologists capturing microscopic images of insect or plant life to help chart changes in biodiversity due to changing weather patterns? In a world where technology is being used more and more frequently for questionable purposes, it’s comforting to know that it can still be implemented for the betterment of humankind.