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Diagnosing Disease With Medical Imaging Systems

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Medical Imaging

Medical Imaging Systems

For centuries microscopes and telescopes have been used to magnify and focus on specific objects; they have used solid lenses that are manually manipulated to focus on the object.

Today, researchers are creating devices that focus light in unconventional ways. Engineers from the University of Freiburg, German are working on an imaging device that rivals the “mechanical simplicity of the human eye.” This breakthrough could pave the way for newer imaging technologies for microscopes used in scientific research facilities and medical settings. These devices could potentially detect skin cancer or highlight visual clues that point to food spoilage.

The device being worked on at the University is one of the first to “demonstrate the imaging capabilities of some unusual focusing techniques by replacing conventional, solid lenses with the combination of a malleable lens and a liquid iris-like component.” This technology allows the device to focus on light at a level that rivals the biological counterpart, the human eye.

Engineers mimic the relatively simple way the human eye and brain connect; muscles move to stretch the lens (in the eye) and that leads to changes in focal length (the distance between the eye and the spot at which light from the UV spectrum are brought into focus). The technology opens and closes the way the iris does when as it contracts or expands to control the amount of light that passes through.

Embedded into the new device are two imaging elements: a silicone lens surrounded by miniaturized motors that adjust and focus by deforming the lens. Researchers say the device can be squeezed and stretched in the “way way the eye squeezes and stretches its lens to adjust for focal length.” Each of the two components in the device: the iris-like liquid and the deformable lens can be engineered to “compensate for any aberrations in the other” and this will lead to a higher optical quality than would happen if the two components worked separate from one another.

The current device is about three centimeters in diameter by five centimeters long. A smaller design will likely be developed, but researchers are currently more concerned with honing the optical quality.

Universe manufactures a full line of objectives and eyepieces for microscopy and other applications.

*This based on information from The Optical Society.