2015 AAAS Annual Meeting (12-16 February 2015)

February 12 - 16, 2015

Affordable Diagnostics for All: High-Resolution Medical Imaging for Saving Lives

Each year, treatable diseases claim lives of several million people in third-world countries because of inadequate health services. According to the World Health Organization, one-fifth of all childhood deaths could be prevented if proper medical infrastructure existed in remote regions of the planet where health care personnel are undertrained, underequipped, and expected to provide care for an excessive number of patients. In the developed world, diagnostics of many diseases are performed by physicians who are trained to use conventional light microscopes to acquire high-resolution images of specimen extracted from patients and interpret them. The symposium will bring together leading researchers to describe innovative imaging and sensing strategies aimed at minimizing disease-related mortalities and burden in the third world. Key themes to be addressed include compact and cost-effective diagnostic microscopes; challenges in point-of-care diagnostics in the developing world; and image processing opportunities created by consumer electronics and mobile phones.