Blog 1 - A 50-cent paper microscope

A 50-cent microscope that folds like origami

Manu Prakash an Indian bio engineer a student of from Stanford University who was on mission to bring radical new technology to global health, once he traveled to a mosquito-infested rainforest in Thailand a couple of years ago, there he visited a clinic where there were $100,000 microscope that sat idle in a locked room. It was then Prakash realized that what global health workers really need is a low cost, simple-to-use, portable microscope that could be arranged in the field to diagnose disease and decided to develop one himself.

As a result he developed a Foldscope - a ‘use and throwaway’ microscope that Prakash made out of thick, waterproof paper and a glass, polymer lens that’s the size of a large grain of sand. While it can be used by simply holding the device up to the sun or a light bulb, there’s also a version illuminated by tiny LEDs powered by an inexpensive watch battery.

The framework of the Foldscope is printed onto a sheet of paper that’s punched with holes in a way that each shape can be easily snapped out and folded in a manner resembling the traditional Japanese art of origami and easily understood by anyone, regardless of their native language.

Different designs, folding patterns, and types and numbers of lenses create different types of microscopes: bright field, dark field and lens-array. A low-magnification microscope costs as little as 50 cents, while a high-mag version is just shy of a dollar.

Manu Prakash’s Foldscope which is a paper microscope that is very easy to use, it uses a regular microscope and so the preparations of blood or tissue samples remain the same. In the simplest version of the scope, the slide is inserted between the microscope’s paper layers and the user, with a thumb and forefinger grasping either end of the microscope strip, holds the lens close to one eye and flexes the strip to find the target object and bring it into focus. It is waterproof and does not break even if thrown from the third floor of a building.

Foldscopes were tested in Ghana, Uganda, Nigeria, and Peru for diagnosis of malaria, microfilariasis, leishmaniasis, schistosomiasis, and sleeping sickness basically for parasite diseases. Foldscopes utilize microfluidic components rather than glass slides which make sample collection and analysis even easier.

This easy and low cost Foldscope gives an opportunity to all the healthcare workers around the globe to better detect and treat diseases, easily carried in pockets and also within the reach of all the world’s students especially in rural areas where there are no resources to test and diagnose the disease. Prakash has launched the Ten Thousand Microscopes Project to entice inquiring minds to beta test these devices and design experiments that can then be compiled into a crowd-sourced microscopy text. He visualized a world in which every kid carries around a 50-cent portable microscope, and brings science out of the lab and into real world biology.

Reference: https://www.ted.com/talks/manu_prakash_a_50_cent_microscope_that_folds_like_origami?referrer=playlist-innovations_that_made_expensiv 

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