Smartphone confocal microscopy for imaging cellular structures in human skin in vivo

We report development of a low-cost smartphone confocal microscope and its first demonstration of in vivo human skin imaging. The smartphone confocal microscope uses a slit aperture and diffraction grating to conduct two-dimensional confocal imaging without using any beam scanning devices. Lateral and axial resolutions of the smartphone confocal microscope were measured as 2 and 5 mu m, respectively. In vivo confocal images of human skin revealed characteristic cellular structures, including spinous and basal keratinocytes and papillary dermis. Results suggest that the smartphone confocal microscope has a potential to examine cellular details in vivo and may help disease diagnosis in resource-poor settings, where conducting standard histopathologic analysis is challenging. (c) 2018 Optical Society of America under the terms of the OSA Open Access Publishing AgreementNational Institute of Health/Fogarty International Center [R21TW010221]; National Cancer Institute [P30CA008748]Open access journal.This item from the UA Faculty Publications collection is made available by the University of Arizona with support from the University of Arizona Libraries. If you have questions, please contact us at repository@u.library.arizona.edu