# Diffraction tomography for accurate digital pathology on a portable microscope

> **NIH NIH R43** · AIRILABS LLC · 2022 · $249,045

## Abstract

Title: Diffraction tomography for accurate digital pathology on a portable microscope
Abstract: Complete blood cell count (CBC) and peripheral blood smear (PBS) analysis are the most
ubiquitous blood tests ordered to help understand the underlying pathological condition of a patient.
Currently, two separate instruments are typically used to conduct these tests, and both require
dedicated lab personnel to operate. As a result of this, the reach of these tests is limited to centralized
lab facilities in hospitals or independent labs with the required infrastructure. This ‘limited’ access
extends to primary care centers as well as emergency rooms in the hospital, where patients experience
longer turnaround times, uncertainty around their symptoms, and multiple follow-ups between tests and
doctor’s prognosis. To address these challenges there have been several recent efforts to develop a
portable system for CBC and PBS analysis, based on high-resolution imaging with an optical
microscope. Unfortunately, due to the challenge of high-resolution imaging over a large volume, these
systems cannot successfully address this problem. Also, parameters of CBC such as Mean Cell Volume
(MCV), Mean Cellular Hemoglobin (MCH), and Hemoglobin (Hb) cannot be obtained from the standard
intensity images of the microscope. Instead, a 3D “tomographic” imaging system is needed to
accurately obtain these parameters from a PBS, but commercial tomographic systems are bulky,
expensive, and can only image a small area of the sample. In this proposal, we will use a 3D
microscopic imaging technique termed Fourier ptychographic tomography (FPT) to generate complete
PBS and CBC parameters such as MCV and MCH from the resulting refractive index and the cell
thickness measurements. Our FPT setup simply requires an LED array placed beneath the sample
plane of a standard microscope, resulting in a compact, portable, and generally low-cost instrument.
Its additional tomographic information also improves the detection of blood cell morphological
conditions such as sickle cell anemia or Leukemia. In this Phase-1 grant, we will develop the world’s
first portable tomographic microscope and demonstrate its utility for automated hematology (i.e., CBC
and PBS analysis) at point-of-care, which will pave the way for future clinical tests of our new instrument
in Phase II.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10257624
- **Project number:** 1R43EB031714-01
- **Recipient organization:** AIRILABS LLC
- **Principal Investigator:** Pratik Bokadia
- **Activity code:** R43 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2022
- **Award amount:** $249,045
- **Award type:** 1
- **Project period:** 2022-03-04 → 2024-03-03

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10257624

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10257624, Diffraction tomography for accurate digital pathology on a portable microscope (1R43EB031714-01). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-24 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10257624. Licensed CC0.

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