Foldscope images - Alternaria spp.

http://www.foldscope.com/foldscope/

Stanford University developed a low cost (less than $1) foldoscope microscope for field identification of microscopic particles of around 5 microns or larger.  The scope comes with an attachment that can be affixed to a cellphone camera. I received two of them in the mail in December of 2014.

The first foldoscope took about 1/2 hour to assemble based on instructions on the sheet.  The second camera took 15 minutes as I grew more familiar with the assembly procedure.

A sample can be taken and placed on a slide provided or a standard microscope slide.  The foldoscope can be held up to a room light to see the image.  

Below are photos taken with a Google Nexus 5 camera phone.  The first photo is the original.  The second photo is cropped with contrast and sharpening using Adobe Photoshop Elements 12 software.

Photo of Alternaria spp. using clear scotch tape on a microscope slide with lacto-fuchsin mounting fluid

Same image cropped, contrast improved and sharpened - click to enlarge

Conclusion: It takes a bit of work to focus the camera image and a bit of photo editing but for less than one $1 US, it is possible to identify a fungal organism down to the genus level.

Foldoscope: Manu Prakash - Stanford University - 15 min.