A recent development in optical technology and smartphone cameras could revolutionize health testing by making it cheaper and faster. Antibiotic resistance has become a major challenge in public healthcare, making it essential to assess bacterial resistance to antibiotic treatments. Optical techniques have made assessments more convenient in clinics. For instance, a lensless imaging system was developed last year to record the characteristic light scattering of different bacteria, allowing healthcare professionals to identify them more rapidly.
A project at Switzerland’s EPFL research center and Vrije Universiteit Brussel has developed a simple platform to test antibiotic susceptibility. The team combined simple optical microscopy with a basic smartphone camera. This simple and cost-effective device allows clinics to carry out faster testing without the expense and complexity of traditional methods. It could provide an antibiogram within two to four hours, compared to the current 24 hours for the most common germs and one month for tuberculosis.
The device exploits the fact that all living cells oscillate at a nanometric scale, and measuring cellular motion could determine whether cells were dead or alive in extreme testing scenarios. The team simplified this process using a traditional optical microscope and multiple video frames, which was analyzed using optical nanomotion detection algorithms. The device successfully detected bacterial sensitivity to antibiotics and determined the antibiotic effect in less than two hours.
This new technique provides a fast, efficient, and cost-effective way of testing antimicrobials, especially for developing countries where resources are scarce. It represents a game-changer in the field of health testing, and its simplicity and efficiency can provide novel avenues for medical testing.
