ISRAEL/FILE: Israeli researcher has developed a way to detect Malaria with a cell phone

Record ID: 396434

  • Title: ISRAEL/FILE: Israeli researcher has developed a way to detect Malaria with a cell phone
  • Date: 8th June 2011
  • Summary: NAIROBI, KENYA (FILE) (ORIGINALLY 4:3) (REUTERS) VARIOUS OF A SCIENTIST PUTTING HIS ARM INTO A MOSQUITO CAGE MOSQUITOS FEEDING
  • Embargoed: 23rd June 2011 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Kenya, Jerusalem, Israel
  • City:
  • Country: Israel
  • Topics: Health,Technology
  • Reuters ID: LVA1X4DECA9HLI9DGMX2R72HZVT4
  • Story Text: As a communications tool, cell phones have become a ubiquitous part of daily life but now an Israeli researcher has found a way to use them for combating one of Africa's most lethal diseases, malaria.
    Alberto Bilenca of Israel's Ben Gurion University has adapted the cell phone's imaging system to non-invasively detect malaria parasites in the blood, enabling a rapid diagnosis of the disease in field conditions.
    Bilenca says the technology will enable any person with a cell phone to identify malaria in resource-limited areas and monitor its severity, as well as transmit the data obtained.
    "Basically you don't need an expert personnel to use this technology. It's very simple to use, Basically you have to hold the cell phone and image the tissue you would like to test. And by looking at the blood flow and at the Malaria pigment images, hopefully you would be able to diagnose and monitor the severity of this terrible disease," Bilenca said.
    Malaria is a parasitic disease spread by mosquitos. In humans, the parasites travel to the liver where they mature and flow into the bloodstream. There, they infect red blood cells and multiply. The symptoms include fever, chills and headaches. Severe cases, if left untreated are often fatal.
    Bilenca's system, which is still being developed, uses a polarized red laser pointer to illuminate human tissue, like that in a finger tip, and a zoom lens and polarizing filter on existing cell phone cameras, to create images that depict the malaria pigment (Hemozoin) in the blood flow. The system can also show micro-obstructions in blood circulation that can result from the infection.
    In his university lab, Bilenca built a working prototype made up from a cell phone and a zoom lens attached to it. The camera phone detects laser light that is projected on a tissue of a finger tip. The image created is then sent to a laptop computer where it is processed to show blood flow.
    The separate components of the device will be incorporated into a single cell phone within four years, Bilenca said. He plans to conduct large scale field tests on animals and humans within a year to prove the system's feasibility and his research team was awarded over $1.4 million by the Gates Foundation, the European Union and other funds to pursue its development.
    The cost of the complete system, which will be at manufacturing stage within approximately four years, will be similar to the cost of a standard cell phone, Bilenca says. With cell phone technology spreading rapidly in the developing world, according to the U.N, Bilenca's vision may become a reality.
    Alon Warburg of the Kuvin Centre for the Study of Infectious and Tropical Diseases at Jerusalem's Hebrew University says Bilenca's technology could be important in combating Malaria since existing methods of diagnosis are lengthy, invasive and expensive.
    "If this technology works, it's going to be an important technology that can help with the diagnosis of by far the most important disease in Africa. And this means, as would be very obvious to anybody in Africa, that when you come to a rural clinic, anything up to 90 percent of the cases would be malaria. Diagnosing them now requires a drop of blood from a finger pick, microscope slide, fixation, staining and examination by microscope - this takes time, it takes professional knowledge of how to do it. What this technology will enable would be for a person to obtain the same data within a minute or less," he said.
    According to the World Health Organisation, about 3.3 billion people - half of the world's population - are at risk of contracting malaria. Every year, this leads to about 250 million malaria cases and nearly one million deaths. In Africa, one in every five childhood deaths is due to the effects of the disease and every 30 seconds a child dies from malaria.
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