CITRIS-sponsored research has applied smartphone-based microscope technology to more easily diagnose the Neglected Tropical Disease onchocerciasis, otherwise known as river blindness. This technological innovation has the potential to expand access to healthcare for communities that lack financial resources. LoaScope, the official name of the mobile technology, “turns the camera of a mobile phone or tablet computer into a high-quality light microscope”. LoaScope is the most recent application of CellScope technology, which converts smartphone technology into diagnostic medical tools. Daniel Fletcher, whose lab invented the technology, says that “this work sets the stage for expanding the use of mobile microscopy to improve diagnosis and treatment of other diseases, both in low-resource areas and eventually back in the U.S.
Berkeley News, November 9, 2017 — A smartphone-based microscope technology developed at UC Berkeley has been used to help treat river blindness, a debilitating disease caused by parasitic worms. The technology, called LoaScope, uses video from a smartphone-connected microscope to automatically detect and quantify infection by parasitic worms in a drop of blood.
River blindness is a disease caused by a parasitic worm found primarily in Africa. The worm (Onchocerca volvulus) is transmitted to humans through bites of infected black flies. Left untreated, infections in the eye can lead to blindness. Complicating matters, the medication to treat the infection, ivermectin, can be fatal when a patient also has high blood levels of another parasitic worm, called Loa loa.
In a paper published in the New England Journal of Medicine, scientists describe how the LoaScope can provide fast and effective testing for Loa loa parasites in the blood. Using the LoaScope to analyze the blood of volunteers from villages in Cameroon, doctors were able to successfully treat more than 15,000 patients with ivermectin without serious complications.
“This is not just a step forward for efforts to eliminate river blindness, but it is a demonstration that mobile microscopy — based on a mobile phone — can safely and effectively expand access to healthcare,” said study co-author and Berkeley bioengineering professor Daniel Fletcher, whose lab invented the technology. “This work sets the stage for expanding the use of mobile microscopy to improve diagnosis and treatment of other diseases, both in low-resource areas and eventually back in the U.S.”