Researchers have developed a groundbreaking smartphone-based digital holographic microscope that enables precise 3D measurements and reconstruction of holograms in real-time. This innovative technology could revolutionize a wide range of applications, from educational uses to point-of-care diagnostics in resource-limited settings.
3D Imaging at Your Fingertips
Previously, there was little else besides complex and unwieldy optical holographic microscopes that needed expensive custom components and high-performance computing facilities to digitally correlate a hologram. A smartphone-based system, called Abicloud and developed by a team from the Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology, turns that traditional model on its head.
Researchers have just evolved a relatively cheap, trouble-free handheld holographic microscope with the help of a 3D-printed optical system and a computation device powered via smartphone. Their solution replicates the rack holograms previously created to record and reproduce real-time interactions with the 3D images on our smartphone screens.
Transforming Diagnostics and Education
The smartphone-based digital holographic microscope has wide range of applications, considered as potential applicability. The researchers believe this could be especially valuable in health care, as an assistive device for diagnosing sickle cell disease in countries that currently cannot afford access to imaging technology.
It has gains beyond just healthcare. The researchers also envision this technology being used in research out in the field, as well as for educational purposes. How powerful if pupils could use this and share things live on a webpage from school to home — observing organisms moving in real time! That can change the way we teach and learn science – by making 3D imaging and measuring simple to do for everyone.
Conclusion
This smartphone-based digital holographic microscope is an important advance that makes 3D imaging and measurement technology more accessible and versatile. Using their solution, which takes advantage of the computing power of smartphones, the researchers have developed an approach that could be easily deployed and would cost just a fraction of currently available profiling solutions and help with everything from better medical diagnostics to stronger science education. We can only imagine the type of applications that will be written once this technology matures all thanks to smartphones making science more accessible in a significant way.
