Integration of Microfluidics in a Smartphone Microscopy Device for Particles Imaging

The necessity for decentralization of diagnostic technology, from a biomedical laboratory to near the patient sites, has driven the research community to engage the new generation smartphones with novel diagnostic and detection platforms. In this work, we will use state-of-the-art knowledge and state-of-the-art technology to construct an innovative platform on mobile devices with a future outlook of in vivo intervention. Specifically, we have built a low-cost smartphone-based microscopy technique by applying optics principles. With this technique we revealed the ability to identify PMMA beads circulating in a microfluidic channel, comparing its performance with the results obtained with an optical trapping device. The proposed platform could act as a detection and image analysis station for rapid and sensitive imaging of human cell collections from body fluids (biomedical diagnosis) or for screening of the water quality in remote areas (environmental pollution monitoring).