3) Smartphone Confocal Microscopy for Imaging Cellular Structures in Human Skin in Vivo

Using a slip aperature and diffraction grating on a smartphone, the research team, including Dongkyun "DK" Kang, has developed a confocal microscope. It's use for in vivo human skin imaging was successful, conducting two-dimensional confocal imaging without the need for any beam scanning devices. These results suggest that the smartphone confocal microscope has a potential to be a low-cost option capable of examining cellular details in vivo and may help disease diagnosis in resource-poor settings, where conducting standard histopathological analysis is challenging. Read the published article.

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 Photos of the smartphone confocal microscope. A – front view with the cover removed; and B – top view.