All-plastic, miniature, digital fluorescence microscope for three part white blood cell differential measurements at the point of care

Biomed Opt Express. 2015 Oct 19;6(11):4433-46. doi: 10.1364/BOE.6.004433. eCollection 2015 Nov 1.

Abstract

Three-part differential white blood cell counts are used for disease diagnosis and monitoring at the point-of-care. A low-cost, miniature achromatic microscope was fabricated for identification of lymphocytes, monocytes, and granulocytes in samples of whole blood stained with acridine orange. The microscope was manufactured using rapid prototyping techniques of diamond turning and 3D printing and is intended for use at the point-of-care in low-resource settings. The custom-designed microscope requires no manual adjustment between samples and was successfully able to classify three white blood cell types (lymphocytes, granulocytes, and monocytes) using samples of peripheral whole blood stained with acridine orange.

Keywords: (170.1470) Blood or tissue constituent monitoring; (170.2520) Fluorescence microscopy; (170.3880) Medical and biological imaging.