An affordable, handheld multimodal microscopic system with onboard cell morphology and counting features on a mobile device.

Microscopes, bright-field (BF) and fluorescence microscopes, in particular, are ubiquitous for clinical diagnostics, cellular and microbiological investigations and in research laboratories. However, the size, cost, fragility and need for skilled personnel to operate these tools restrict their use in resource-limited settings. As an alternative platform, herein, we report a flexible multimodal imaging system that operates in BF and fluorescence modes using a smartphone.