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In This Issue

Digital holography can help perform rapid, reliable, and unencumbered cancer diagnosis at points of care, particularly in resource-poor settings. Hyungsoon Im et al. (pp. 5613–5618) developed an assay called “digital diffraction diagnosis” based on computational analysis of diffraction patterns of molecularly tagged beads that bind to cancer markers found in patient samples. A plastic module fitted with a light source, minilens, and sample insert was snapped snugly atop the camera of a smartphone, which recorded and uploaded patterns from the beads to a remote server, furnishing a preliminary diagnosis within 45 minutes. The authors tested the assay’s utility for cervical cancer screening and human papillomavirus (HPV) detection. Using beads that bind to cells labeled with antibodies against cervical cancerassociated markers, the authors determined average bead counts per targeted cell (nbead) for cervical samples from 25 patients with abnormal Pap smears; the samples were separately identified through conventional pathology as “high risk,” “low risk,” or “benign.” Using nbead as a diagnostic parameter, the authors grouped the samples into high-risk versus low-risk/benign categories, with a sensitivity of 100% and specificity of 92%. The assay also helped detect atto-mole ranges of HPV DNA in patient samples. According to the authors, the assay, which currently costs $1.80 per diagnosis, demonstrates the feasibility of a smartphone-based diagnostic approach in resource-limited settings. — P.N.