Micro camera based Lensless Microscope for a miniaturized diagnostic platform

Abstract

The fast paced development in life sciences in recent years resulted in the integration of laboratory equipment into miniaturized mobile point-of-care diagnostic units as well as biotechnological microfluidic systems. Similar to the evolution of microelectronics, the "Micro System Technology" is the driver for the integration and miniaturization on the system level. For PoC, this clearly is reflected in the increased functionality, the number of analysis performed per devices and the reduced amount of sample liquid required to run a high-quality analysis.Due to the physical constraints, however, this evolution is not easily adopted to the optical analytics, like microscopy. As neither the lightpath nor the lens sizes can be modified without a complete re-engineering of the system, the evolution has stalled here. Therefore, the presented work targets the development and implementation of a lens-less microscope combining optics and microfluidics specifically for cell and particle analysis. Conceptually designed without any movable elements or lenses, the images obtained can be processed digitally for analysis and visualization. This is achieved by combining modern image sensors, holography principles and image deconvolution to enable novel approaches to microscopic observations, be it bacteria, cell clusters or micro particles.We show in this work the path to realization for the lens less microscope from the initial concept, the implementation strategy to demonstrating the capabilities of the device.The innovation is compared to the capabilities of conventional microscopy, using both live organisms and particles as well as simulation models to holography imaging as well as photonic wave theory.The microscope platform is demonstrated as a 3D rapid prototype, offering a versatile system for easy implementation in a laboratory and research setting.Microscopic sampling is used to offer correlation of the actual achievements of the system and derive future optimization criteria. Also, the viability w.r.t. cytometrics and live observation in microfluidic bioreactors id demonstrated.A synopsis on the achievements as well as the outlook w.r..t. fluorescence or tomography analysis is given.