

Caltech creates 1um resolution microscope cheap enough for home use. - chris11
http://www.technologyreview.com/biomedicine/21147/

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gjm11
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.)

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mkn
In this New Yorker article:
[http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/05/12/080512fa_fact_...](http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/05/12/080512fa_fact_gladwell?currentPage=all)
, 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.

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

~~~
gambling8nt
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.

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davi
Links to real info:

<http://www.biophot.caltech.edu/research/ofm/ofm.html>

[edit, more better:]

[http://www.rsc.org/delivery/_ArticleLinking/DisplayHTMLArtic...](http://www.rsc.org/delivery/_ArticleLinking/DisplayHTMLArticleforfree.cfm?JournalCode=LC&Year=2006&ManuscriptID=b604676b&Iss=10)

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antidaily
Can it fill a house with popcorn?

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

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

