A team from the University of Utah has discovered a method that turns a small, US$40 needle into a 3D microscope able to capture pictures up to 70 times more minute than the width of a human hair.

The new technique is capable of producing high-quality images similar to ones taken with expensive microscopes, and may also be implanted into the brains of living mice for observation at the cellular level.

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The study will be published in the Aug. 18 issue of the journal, "Applied Physics Letters."

The technique with the microscope works when an LED is turned on and put through a cannula or fiberoptic needle.

The method was designed by associate professor of electrical and computer engineering Rajesh Menon and postgraduate student Hanghun Kim. Using algorithms developed by Menon and Kim, the pictures are put together to create three-dimensional models of specimens.

"Unlike miniature microscopes, our approach does not use optics," Menon said. "It's primarily computational."

He said the method will let researchers take pictures far smaller than those captured present miniature microscopes, but do it for a fraction of the cost.

"We can get approximately 1-micron-resolution images that only $250,000 and higher microscopes are capable of generating," Menon said. "Miniature microscopes are limited to the few tens of microns."

He said he hopes to extend the technology in the future for it to break through the present 1.4 micron resolution and see structures down to submicron levels.

For comparison, there are 1,000 microns in one millimeter. A typical human hair is 100 microns or 0.1 millimeters wide.

Originally, the microscope was designed for the laboratory of Mario Capecchi, the Nobel Prize-winning human genetics professor, whose team will use it to monitor brains of living mice.

TagsMicroscope, University of Utah, Engineering, Biology, Cells