Squid is a quantitative imaging platform with a full suite of hardware and software components and configurations for deploying facility-grade widefield microscopes at a fraction of the cost of commercial solutions. Developed with the goal of helping translate the rapid advances in the field of microscopy and microscopy-enabled methods, including those powered by deep learning, we envision Squid will simplify roll-out of microscopy-based applications - including at point of care and in low resource settings, make adoption of new or otherwise advanced techniques easier, and significantly increase the available microscope-hours to labs.
Significance
Manual microscopy has served as a bedrock for the diagnostics of various infectious diseases, although at a cost of tedious labor and human errors. Imagine looking for 1 to 5 parasites amongst 5 million red blood cells. Currently, microscopists can take up to 10-15 minutes to review a single slide. Automated robotic microscopes are poised to enable a new era of smart field microscopy but current platforms remain cost prohibitive and largely inflexible, especially for resource-poor and field settings.
github repos
CAD models linked available here (a lot of google links there (docs, drive, etc))
