RPi-microscope for histology with focus-drive and XY stage
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Simple framework to hold a histology sample above a Raspberry-Pi (RPi) camera fitted with an acrylic lens to generate a half-descent, low cost microscope. Shown in the images is a brain-slice from rat focussed on the hippocampus and a piece of 3D printing garbage. "Magnification", with a large screen as shown, is in the order of x100.
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The idea is pretty similar to my "phone-scope (http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:280004)" - but image quality is much better (as the RPi camera is great for macro) and here I have a proper focus drive as well as XY-table. A raspberry pi costs about 30$ and the camera another 10$ - so it's a quite cheap solution for a simple, yet half-descent microscope (e.g. for teaching).
Note: Acrylic lense does, like basically any plastic, filter UV. So in principle it should be possible to get fluorescent images out of this by using a strong UV-LED and hope for the best in terms of UV filtering with the lens. If this doesn't work ( I havent tried) try adding some cheap sunglasses, or indeed any odd bit of plastic under the sample for extra UV filtering.