Monitor Your Health With A Cell Phone
Here's the house call of the future. A prototype cell phone that monitors HIV and malaria patients and tests water quality in undeveloped areas or disaster sites. Data is then be sent via the cell phone to a hospital for analysis and diagnosis.
The imaging platform is already here. It's called LUCAS and has been experimentally installed in a cell phone and a webcam, each of which then takes an image of blood, saliva or other fluids using short-wavelength blue light. LUCAS can identify and count the microparticles instantly by using a decision algorithm to compare the captured images to a library of images.
The technology is the brainchild of electrical engineer Aydogan Ozcan of UCLA. His latest version, called holographic LUCAS, is described in the journal Lab On A Chip. Holographic LUCAS can identify smaller particles than before, such as E. coli. Ozcan's next step is to build a handheld device for people in remote areas to use to monitor the spread of disease, allowing doctors to know where they're most needed fast.