Communications of the ACM

P H O T O B Y S E B A S T I E N B O Z O N / A F P / G E T T Y I M A G E S

which are typically performed in centralized laboratories at major hospitals—within reach of remote doctors’ offices, and eventually consumers. The microscope could also have a wide range of other applications for biotechnology and nanotechnology research in remote environments.

“This transformation is really
helping us become competitive with
things that are normally done in ad-
vanced labs and professional set-
tings,” says Ozcan. “This is about the
democratization of measurement,
science, and diagnostics.”
At Washington State University, a
team of researchers led by Lei Li has cre-
ated a smartphone-based spectrometer
capable of analyzing blood samples for
a specific biomarker known as human
interleukin- 6, commonly associated
with lung, prostate, liver, and breast
cancers. The device could also allow
users to conduct spectrophotometric
analysis for a variety of purposes includ-
ing food safety, water quality, and other
types of environmental analysis.

IN HIS 1998 book The Invisible Computer, user experience pi- oneer Don Norman predicted that general-purpose com- puters would one day give way to “information appliances”: compact tools designed for specialized computational purposes, capable of communicating across a wide range of platforms.

Thanks to recent innovations in mobile processors, sensors, and image capture tools, Norman’s vision now looks remarkably prescient—nowhere more so than in the worlds of science and medicine, where advances in mobile technology are starting to yield lightweight, low-cost scientific instruments that promise to democratize access to a wide range of powerful diagnostic techniques.

Over the past few years, researchers have created smartphone-powered tools capable of taking blood samples, identifying viruses, analyzing water safety, and even sequencing DNA. Many of these instruments are already allowing scientists and medical professionals to gather and analyze data in ways that, until recently, would have required bulky and expensive lab-based equipment.

“Over the past decade we’ve seen enormous advances in the capabilities of smartphones,” says Aydogan Ozcan, a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) who led an international team that created a smartphone-based microscope capable of analyzing DNA sequences in tissue samples with a level of fidelity comparable to that of a conventional microscope.

When Ozcan first started explor-
ing the idea of a mobile phone-based
microscope in 2006, his team created
a specialized camera attachment ca-
pable of registering a red blood cell—
about one-tenth the width of a hu-
man hair. Today, thanks to advances
in smartphone lenses and processor
power, Ozcan’s team has been able to
develop an Android-based system ca-
pable of registering a DNA molecule
just two nanometers wide (about 500
times smaller than a red blood cell).

The device works by taking multiple different images of a tissue sample, which it then feeds into an algorithm that analyzes the images using fluorescent dyes to sequence the DNA bases and look for genetic mutations inside the tumor. The researchers claim the device can identify even miniscule signs of cancer among a large group of cells.

The team prototyped the device using a three-dimensional printer, and estimates the smartphone-based microscopes could ultimately be produced for less than $500 per unit—a fraction of the $10,000 to $50,000 that a traditional high-end microscope would typically cost.