Think about how “Star Trek” tricorders are also available in medical versions. Or just think about how episodes of “Quincy, M. E. “if Jack Klugman had brought an iPhone with a companion pattern analyzer.
This is the core concept of Apple’s recently granted patent, “Systems and Accessories for Optical Analysis of Samples in Portable Electronic Devices. “It is about having a small space in which biological samples can be placed to be analyzed, in part, through the iPhone.
Specifically, the patent states that the accessory “may have a lens aligned with a rear camera” on the iPhone. Apple also makes that typical patent of covering all the bases by saying that it doesn’t have to be an iPhone, but it can be anything.
But the bottom line is that a portable formula can run on-site controls, so for all intents and purposes, it’s going to be an iPhone that this control accessory will be connected to. Therefore, a biological pattern will be placed on “a verification substrate, such as a verification slide [that] would possibly involve patches of gold nanobars coated with reagents or other nanostructures that exhibit plasmonic resonances when illuminated through light. “
The pattern isn’t placed on a slide like the one seen under microscopes, and there are already microscopes attached to the iPhone. Here, a test sheet is more of a component of a fixture that also provides that lighting.
In the above representation, the item rated 10 is the iPhone and 20R is the iPhone camera. Item rated 40 is the spectroscopy “slide” inserted into the device.
“Light passes through the test slide to patches of reagent-coated nanobars or other nanostructures,” Apple explains, “and scatters from the nanostructures in a perpendicular direction through the lens into the camera. “
Therefore, it is the iPhone’s camera that records what is called the spectral shift shown through the verification pattern. “These spectral adjustments can be analyzed to aid pattern composition,” Apple continues, “(for example, whether a pattern comprises a virus that binds to an antibody or other reactant). “
“[The iPhone’s] virtual symbol sensor can come with pixels of other colors, such as reds, greens, and blues,” the patent states, “thus allowing the camera to make smooth intensity measurements in wavelength bands (e. g. , a red wavelength band, a blue wavelength band, and a green wavelength band). “
Being able to do this means that we can decide the chemical composition of a pattern of frames by investigating those smooth intensity measurements.
Most of the 6,500 words and 10 pages of drawings are true to the main points of what we can decide when testing biological samples in this way. But elements of the iPhone show that it doesn’t use long-term technology, it’s a complement that would work with the existing iPhone 15 lineup.
This is quite a bit for an Apple patent, but you still can’t assume that such an accessory will ever be made. Apple files thousands of patents every year and even when some are granted, this can only be considered as a domain. of interest to the company.
I would understand that.
Interesting. I think other corporations take pictures with cameras to analyze medical samples, which would be very useful for faster diagnoses.