Department of Bioengineering, Rice University, Houston, Texas, United States of America.
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Rice University, Houston, Texas, United States of America.
PLoS One. 2019 Apr 10;14(4):e0214090. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0214090. eCollection 2019.
At the primary care setting, where there are often no or minimal laboratories, examinations often consist of self-testing and rapid diagnostics. Because of this, medical devices must be simple, robust, and easy to operate. To address these concerns, an alternate fluorescence microscope design uses ultraviolet (UV) excitation, since fluorescent dyes that are excitable in the visible region are also excitable by UV. This may allow for the removal of typical excitation, emission, and dichroic filters as optical components absorb UV wavelengths and UV is not detected by silicon based detectors. Additionally, UV has a very low penetration into samples, which may allow for controlling the depth of excitation, and thus the imaging volume. Based on these ideas, we developed a simple fluorescence microscope built completely from off-the-shelf components that uses UV to image fluorescently stained samples. The simple opto-mechanical design of the system may allow it to be more compact and easy to use, as well as decrease the overall cost of the diagnostic device. For biological validation, we imaged whole blood stained with acridine orange and performed a two-part white blood cell differential count.
在初级保健环境中，通常没有或只有很少的实验室，检查通常包括自我检测和快速诊断。因此，医疗器械必须简单、坚固且易于操作。为了解决这些问题，一种替代的荧光显微镜设计使用紫外线 (UV) 激发，因为在可见区域可激发的荧光染料也可被 UV 激发。这可能允许去除典型的激发、发射和二向色滤光片，因为光学元件吸收 UV 波长，并且硅基探测器不会检测到 UV。此外，UV 对样品的穿透深度非常低，这可能允许控制激发的深度，从而控制成像体积。基于这些想法，我们开发了一种完全由现成组件构建的简单荧光显微镜，该显微镜使用 UV 来对荧光染色的样品进行成像。系统的简单光电机械设计可能使其更紧凑、更易于使用，并降低诊断设备的整体成本。为了进行生物学验证，我们对用吖啶橙染色的全血进行成像，并进行了白细胞二分类计数。
