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Doctors Without Borders finds best results with LabCam over two microscope adapters

November 08, 2017

Doctors Without Borders tested three microscope adapters for taking microscope images with an iPhone, and found the LabCam, from iDu Optics, to have the best results because of its: easy set up, stability, fantastic image quality, and ability to support live streaming.

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AUTHOR: Kate Hughes

Doctors Without Boarders says: iDu LabCam is the best!

MSF (Medecins Sans Frontieres), otherwise known as Doctors Without Borders, works in conflict zones, natural disasters, and areas where health care simply isn’t available. These low-resource settings mean staff in their projects come up against all sorts of barriers. The ideas developed within the innovation team can lead to solutions that help to tackle some of these and so improve the service that are given to the patients.

One pioneering idea, proposed by Dr. Jaap Karsten, a paediatric adviser with MSF, is to use smartphones, to improve the ways of photos are taken in field locations on a microscope. Photos of specimen slides, such as blood sample slides, that are taken with the aid of a microscope and are essential for providing information on patient cases.

By uploading photomicrographs to an online ‘telemedicine’ platform, MSF clinical staff working in remote locations can share them with consultants in other parts of the world. The consultants can analyze the photomicrographs and make an expert, remote diagnosis. This means the absence of medical staff with a particular specialization in field locations is not a barrier to the best possible care for patients.

With three adaptors to test, the pressure was on to find the one that would best meet the requirements of MSF field teams: it had to give great results in terms of picture quality, be easy to set up, compatible with existing MSF equipment and be relatively inexpensive.

The three adaptors tested were the Bresser, the Syvu and the iDU. The testing team consisted of medical and laboratory experts and through rigorous trails, each adaptor was tested and assessed.

The results are in…

The Bresser and Syvu, whilst universal and able to work with any phone, were complicated to set up and not very stable. The Bresser was made more stable with some modifications, and so the better of the two options.

However, the iDU had a completely different design and actually replaced the eyepiece of the microscope. Although it was only compatible with iPhones, its easy set up, stability and fantastic image quality, as well as the option for live streaming of images, meant that it gave the best quality results.

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