The first lightfield eyepiece for 3D microscopy

Great news for all microscopists! Our close-to-market prototype is almost ready! It’s been an exciting journey since BeAble Capital discovered the work that full professors Manuel Martínez-Corral and Genaro Saavedra together with our CTO Ángel Tolosa and other members of the 3DDisplayLab where developing.

Like many other breakthroughs, the idea behind it was simple but genius. Instruments with an ocular port are intended to be used by humans. But what if instead of a human eye, the observer is a machine?

A digital insect compound eye

See the microscopic world through the eyes of an insect

Similar to an insect compound eye, our plenoptic or lightfield technology uses microlenses to get different perspectives from the scene. As you might already know, 3D vision in our case is based on stereoscopic vision. We get a couple of images with slight parallax and our brain reconstructs the 3D scene.

Our eyepiece obtains multiple perspectives and the computer (the device’s brain) based on software algorithms, reconstructs the 3D microscopic information of the scene. This allows your conventional microscope to get 3D information from one ocular and 2D information from the other.

Convert your microscope into a 3D digital imaging microscope

As you can see in the picture below, the DOIT 3D Micro lightfield eyepiece is a cost-effective, easy-to-use, plug&play, and portable device that can be used in all microscopes provided with a standard ocular port.

After the eyepiece is attached, the software process the optical information for 3D real-time image visualization and manipulation. Thanks to its different modules, the 3D image is presented in different ways that enhance diverse characteristics of the scene and its depth, such as views from several observation points, visualization of occlusions, selection of the focus plane along with the depth of field, an image with all planes focused at once, a depth map or topography of the surface of the inspected object, among others.

The system is very useful in many applications and is aimed at microscopy users who need high-quality 3D information from 1 micron (based on the native resolution of the microscope where it is coupled): researchers, technology centers, universities, R&D and inspection/QC departments, forensic work, …

Become a pioneer using the 3D lightfield microscope eyepiece!

Incredible, isn’t it? We know many microscopy users are tired of complex techniques and they just want to focus on their job instead of becoming physics experts. 3D microscopy solutions nowadays require many hours of training, bulky settings, and painful sample preparation, which increases the process times and the risk of undesired outcomes. And on top of that, big amounts of money investment!

We want to help scientists and technicians get rid of all of the above! We are now opening a pre-order period for a limited number of collaborators to do final testing on real application environments. If you have the right pioneer mindset, want to be the first of many, like to collaborate for the progress and easy access to science and, want to save some good money in the meantime… Join us!

IRB Barcelona is “a world-class research center devoted to understanding fundamental questions about human health and disease. Among others, the Institute’s missions include conducting multidisciplinary research of excellence at the unique interface between biology, chemistry, and medicine, providing high-level training in the biomedical sciences to staff, students and visitors, driving innovation through active technology transfer to the benefit of society, and actively participating in an open dialogue with the public through a series of engagement and education activities.”

Doitplenoptic came across this incredible institute thanks to REMOA members during the 2019 SPAOM Meeting in Coimbra. Particularly when we met Julien Colombelli (Head of Advanced Digital Microscopy at IRB) one of the most reputed experts worldwide in advanced optical microscopy.

After explaining to him DOIT’s technology and our will of providing a 3D microscope for all, we were effortlessly on a good path for a collaboration agreement. Julien has this kind of fantastic scientific mindset. Always open to explore, improve, collaborate, and grow.

exceptional scientific results deserve to be transferred to society

Besides Julien’s disposition, technology transfer is key for IRB. As they claim “exceptional scientific results deserve to be transferred to society. With this in mind, IRB Barcelona has devised a proactive strategy to ensure that the discoveries made in its labs are developed into products and technologies that serve the scientific and healthcare communities, as well as society at large.”

These ingredients were the perfect receipt for the collaboration to happen: we agreed with IRB to conduct a pilot test project led by Julien Colombelli.

Institut de Recerca Biomedica - Photo by IRB

This collaboration will help us to get closer to our mission of democratizing 3D microscopy. Julien and the rest of his team will detect any flaws, errors, or imperfections as well as suggest to us final improvements and modifications to deliver the best performance per each application where the 3D lightfield microscopy can make a substantial difference.

This sort of co-creation stage is a great leap for the final stages of development. Having the expert feedback of IRB adds great value both for the product itself and the go-to-market strategy before the official launch. We will understand better the needs of microscopists in different fields (life sciences, industry, clinical,…) looking for a 3D solution to perform their jobs.

Doitplenoptic is studying new proposals of collaboration similar to IRB’s pilot test. If you want to participate and help us bring a 3D microscope for all, drop us a line!

Let’s DOIT 3D!

PS: We also want to thank Tiago Oliveira from IRB who has made everything possible!

The program X-Europe a Startup Europe initiative has selected among 177 applicants, the most promising companies in deeptech. Doitplenoptic in one of the 25 startups that will participate in the program in the Healthtech, MedTech and Biotech first Cohort.

The opportunities that science will provide to us are endless. Investing in science and knowledge is key to our future. The current COVID19 crisis has demonstrated that the only way of facing challenges is science. We are firm believers in science. We truly believe that knowledge has to be accessible to the society and everyone should be able to get all the benefits out of it.