Robotic microscopy for everyone: the OpenFlexure Microscope

Publishing date: 2020-02-07

Published on: bioRxiv

summary: Channel Editor Summary: For this update the “editor’s pick” highlights two papers describing two different tools that leverage previous open designs, showing in practice the benefits of using open source hardware for scientific tool development. The first paper (a biorxiv preprint) by Collins et al show improvements to the design of the Open Flexure microscope, which can now automatically position and focus samples. The microscopy modalities have also been expanded (including fluorescence and polarisation contrast imaging). They’ve built and deployed more than 100 units of the microscope in east Africa for educational, scientific and clinical applications all while sourcing and building locally, bypassing traditional supply chains and the issues related to them. The second paper by Vallejo et al published in Scientific Reports (see below) describes an optical projection tomography (OPT) system for large transparent organ samples.

authors: Joel T. Collins, Joe Knapper, Julian Stirling, Joram Mduda, Catherine Mkindi, Valeriana Mayagaya, Grace A. Mwakajinga, Paul T. Nyakyi, Valerian L. Sanga, Dave Carbery, Leah White, Sara Dale, Zhen Jieh Lim, Jeremy J. Baumberg, Pietro Cicuta, Samuel McDermott, Boyko Vodenicharski, Richard Bowman doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/861856

link to paper: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/861856v1

Icons made by catkuro from www.flaticon.com