Team:Bielefeld-CeBiTec/Design

Prototype Design

The first steps

In the beginning we wanted to test, if it could really work to photograph fluorescence with an smartphone. Therefore we got an light engineering Filter from the "Frauenkulturzentrum Bielefeld e.V." and put it in front of the camera and the flash. You can see different colors in the picture. So in our first impression we thought it's worth to try some other Filters.

The first filtertest to get an rough impression if it could work, to use two filters for fluorescence imaging. We used one Filter in front of the flash and the same one in front of the camera. In the picture you can see purified GFP, sfGFP lysat and the lysat of a not induced sfGFP culture.

Therefore we bought a lee color filter catalog and began to test different filter combinations. But before testing we decided to messure the extinction and emission spektra from sfGFP as a basis to choose the most promising filter combinition. It was possible to make such a preselection because every Filter had a light transmitting spektra.

Lee color filter catalog

The next step was to create an dark environment. Therefore we did handicrafts to design a "black box". Now it was possible to take photos under same conditions and same background.

The black box: tinkered to take photos under same conditions

Thats nice! But how do we quantify our fluorescence output?