California Institute of Technology (Caltech) researchers have designed a lensless, super-resolution cell culture imaging system from smartphones and Lego. The system provides a simple and affordable super-resolution microscopy technique for cell biologists
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For the prototype, the Caltech group used an Android smartphone for a light source, Lego blocks for the system’s base, and a CMOS imaging sensor from a standard cell phone camera. In an article published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the researchers reported that the system imaged samples at 660-nm resolution. Furthermore, the team imaged color-stained samples, monitored culture growth without removal from an incubator, and tracked embryonic stem cell differentiation across the entire 4 mm x 6 mm CMOS sensor.
