Microscopic examination of Giemsa-stained blood slides has generally been considered the gold standard in disease diagnostics. Microscopy, however, relies heavily on the knowledge, level of skill, and judgement of the user, which could affect its sensitivity and specificity. In low-resource settings such as remote health outposts, it is difficult to find, train, and support proficient microscopists, especially those capable of detecting early infection.
If you have been following IV Lab for a while, you likely know that we have been working on new diagnostics technologies for some time. One of the diagnostic platforms our scientsts and engineers are developing is an automated optical diagnostic microscope. The Autoscope aims to be a low-cost, portable, fast, automated miscroscope that can detect stained parasites using image-processing algorithms.
