4 ms·

Caltech creates 1um resolution microscope cheap enough for home use.

47 points by chris11 18y ago

antidaily 18y ago
Can it fill a house with popcorn?
minor_thread 18y ago
i heard iDealsChina already has leaked pics of an iphone with this embedded
lallysingh 18y ago
Wow, I have material for at least six months' worth of small penis jokes now.
derefr 18y ago
Something's wrong with this story's comments here. What's going on?
- minor_thread 18y ago
  dunno.. somethings def up tho..
- gambling8nt 18y ago
  On HN, when you have an interesting topic about which there is very little to say, you find topics voted to near the top with no comments. On Reddit, a popular topic with no comments gets garnished with one-liners. On HN, contentless one-liners get downvoted. Hence the comment pattern on this article.
gjm11 18y ago
Yes, cheap enough for home use, but not necessarily suitable for home use. The idea is that instead of using lenses to get a magnified image of something at a distance, you arrange for your sample to go really close to a digital-camera-style sensor without any lenses. You get multiple images by sending the sample past several bits of your sensor. Then you do some computation (the article doesn't say what for, but I guess the idea is to increase the effective resolution by having those multiple images, and maybe also to remove diffraction artefacts). All very neat, but only suitable for capturing images of things you can actually do this to. The idea of the system described in the article is that you can do it to cells suspended in fluid (water? something else? I don't know) if you're clever about controlling how they move over your sensor. But if what you want is a greatly magnified image of a fly's wing or a bit of paper or an integrated circuit, or (I'm guessing here) even something that is (as per the design) suspended in fluid but that might have things larger than cells that could block the channels through which the fluid moves, then you're out of luck. I'm sure it can be generalized somewhat, but there are some limitations that seem really hard to overcome. You absolutely have to get the sample very close to the sensor. You absolutely have to illuminate it transmissively rather than reflectively. (At least, that's how it seems to me.)
mkn 18y ago
In this New Yorker article: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/05/12/080512fa_fact_gladwell?currentPage=all http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/05/12/080512fa_fact_... , there's a discussion about a novel cancer therapy for which this microscope is well-suited. The idea is that, when cancer metastasizes, that each of the cancer cells circulate in your bloodstream thousands or tens of thousands of times, so you've got plenty of time to nix them, if you can find them. If you could design a device that would shunt some of the blood out of and then back into a blood vessel, check for cancer cells in between (if you could develop a recognizer, which is apparently feasible), and remove the cells one at a time, you might be able to slow the disease long enough for other treatments to run their course.
davi 18y ago
Links to real info: http://www.biophot.caltech.edu/research/ofm/ofm.html http://www.biophot.caltech.edu/research/ofm/ofm.html [edit, more better:] http://www.rsc.org/delivery/_ArticleLinking/DisplayHTMLArticleforfree.cfm?JournalCode=LC&Year=2006&ManuscriptID=b604676b&Iss=10 http://www.rsc.org/delivery/_ArticleLinking/DisplayHTMLArtic...

47 points by chris11 18y ago

antidaily 18y ago

Can it fill a house with popcorn?

minor_thread 18y ago

i heard iDealsChina already has leaked pics of an iphone with this embedded

lallysingh 18y ago

Wow, I have material for at least six months' worth of small penis jokes now.

derefr 18y ago

Something's wrong with this story's comments here. What's going on?

minor_thread 18y ago
dunno.. somethings def up tho..
gambling8nt 18y ago
On HN, when you have an interesting topic about which there is very little to say, you find topics voted to near the top with no comments. On Reddit, a popular topic with no comments gets garnished with one-liners. On HN, contentless one-liners get downvoted. Hence the comment pattern on this article.

gjm11 18y ago

Yes, cheap enough for home use, but not necessarily suitable for home use. The idea is that instead of using lenses to get a magnified image of something at a distance, you arrange for your sample to go really close to a digital-camera-style sensor without any lenses. You get multiple images by sending the sample past several bits of your sensor. Then you do some computation (the article doesn't say what for, but I guess the idea is to increase the effective resolution by having those multiple images, and maybe also to remove diffraction artefacts). All very neat, but only suitable for capturing images of things you can actually do this to. The idea of the system described in the article is that you can do it to cells suspended in fluid (water? something else? I don't know) if you're clever about controlling how they move over your sensor. But if what you want is a greatly magnified image of a fly's wing or a bit of paper or an integrated circuit, or (I'm guessing here) even something that is (as per the design) suspended in fluid but that might have things larger than cells that could block the channels through which the fluid moves, then you're out of luck. I'm sure it can be generalized somewhat, but there are some limitations that seem really hard to overcome. You absolutely have to get the sample very close to the sensor. You absolutely have to illuminate it transmissively rather than reflectively. (At least, that's how it seems to me.)

mkn 18y ago

In this New Yorker article: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/05/12/080512fa_fact_gladwell?currentPage=all http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/05/12/080512fa_fact_... , there's a discussion about a novel cancer therapy for which this microscope is well-suited. The idea is that, when cancer metastasizes, that each of the cancer cells circulate in your bloodstream thousands or tens of thousands of times, so you've got plenty of time to nix them, if you can find them. If you could design a device that would shunt some of the blood out of and then back into a blood vessel, check for cancer cells in between (if you could develop a recognizer, which is apparently feasible), and remove the cells one at a time, you might be able to slow the disease long enough for other treatments to run their course.

davi 18y ago

Links to real info: http://www.biophot.caltech.edu/research/ofm/ofm.html http://www.biophot.caltech.edu/research/ofm/ofm.html [edit, more better:] http://www.rsc.org/delivery/_ArticleLinking/DisplayHTMLArticleforfree.cfm?JournalCode=LC&Year=2006&ManuscriptID=b604676b&Iss=10 http://www.rsc.org/delivery/_ArticleLinking/DisplayHTMLArtic...