Scientists at the University of California, Berkeley and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) created a portable microscope that works in tandem with an iPhone app to find traces of parasites, specifically the Loa Loa worm, in your blood.
The device called CellScope is geared towards health workers operating in rural areas where the Loa Loa worm is common and access to labs are hard to find.
A paper published in the journal Science Translational Medicine described the device’s first test run, which recruited 33 potentially Loa Loa-infected patients in Cameroon, Africa.
Read More: Bioscience Bulletin
Here’s how the process works: A small drop of blood is inserted into the device. The health workers then need to activate the app to begin recording a video. If there are Loa Loa worms in the patient’s blood, an algorithm scans their movements and tallies a worm count. All it takes is two minutes for a worm count to appear on screen.
Watch the video below to see CellScope in action.
