Smart phones may offer an affordable, portable way to diagnose intestinal worm infection, the most common infection in developing countries.

Isaac Bogoch at Toronto General Hospital in Canada and his group transformed an iPhone into a microscope by attaching an inexpensive lens to its camera. Almost 200 stool samples from children in Pemba Island, Tanzania, were mounted on slides and studied using the microscope. Experts identified more than 60% of worm-free slides, and nearly 70% of samples with eggs — of these, eggs from the large roundworm Ascaris lumbricoides had the highest rate of detection, at 81%.

Although similar portable microscopes have been made before, most have stayed in the laboratory. The authors say that this is the first field-based clinical test of such devices for intestinal worms, and they predict that higher-resolution imaging will boost the accuracy of smart-phone diagnoses.

Am. J. Trop. Med. Hyg. http://dx.doi.org/10.4269/ajtmh.12-0742 (2013)