Focusing on field analysis

The development of cost-efficient, portable microscopy units would greatly expand their use in remote field locations and in places with fewer resources, potentially leading to easier on-site analysis of contaminants such as E. coli in water sources as well as other practical applications.

Current microscopy systems, like those used to image micro-organisms, are expensive because they are optimized for maximum resolution and minimal deformation of the images the systems produce. But some situations do not require such optimization--for instance, simply detecting the presence of pathogens in water. One potential approach to developing a low-cost portable microscopy system is to use transparent microspheres in combination with affordable low-magnification objective lenses to increase image resolution and sensitivity.

A group of researchers from Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland published a study on such an assembly composed of barium titanate spheres that are partially embedded in thin polymeric membranes. The result of their work, appearing in SPIE's new END