[youtube]http://youtu.be/Kh7MUjIYuyw[/youtube]
A team of researchers from a university in Illinois, USA, succeeded to transform iPhone- in a biosensor with the help of a special accessory, but also of an application developed by them. The accessory aligns a series of photonic crystal lenses and special filters with the camera of the iPhone terminal, and with their help and the application, a whole series of toxins, proteins, bacteria, molecules, DNA, etc. can be detected, the terminal becoming a real spectrometer, with enough effort.
We're interested in biodetection that needs to be performed outside of the laboratory. Smartphones are making a big impact on our society – the way we get our information, the way we communicate. And they have really powerful computing capability and imaging. A lot of medical conditions might be monitored very inexpensively and non-invasively using mobile platforms like phones. They can detect molecular things, like pathogens, disease biomarkers or DNA, things that are currently only done in big diagnostic labs with lots of expense and large volumes of blood.
All the components used to manufacture the accessory cost only $200, but the device achieves results very close to those of laboratory equipment that costs exponentially more. The idea behind the project is to offer non-invasive and cheap methods to analyze cells in laboratories and for now it seems that the final result is a very positive one, it remains to be seen how it will evolve in the future.
