Cell phone camera’s are small. However, typically microscopes are large bulky devices that have large lenses to collect light and are used for getting high resolution magnified images that are coupled to bulkier high sensitivity camera’s. But what about in-vivo microscopy where the animal needs to be brought below the microscope to focus. The laboratories of Abbas El Gamal and Mark Schnitzer have scaled down the microscope to about 2 cm. It still resolves down to 2.5 microns but if they start using the cell phone camera’s that are just coming out then it is possible that they will reach the diffraction limit of resolution. There are several innovations in the design. For one, the light source LED has been integrated into the microscope. You can see the pictures of the microscope and the lab on their website. This has led to the start of a new company called Inscopix to commercialize this microscope too.
Micro-Microscope
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