Eureka Moment

I was wrapping things up at a rare early 3:30 today and filed my slides. What to do? Attack the pile of journals three months thick sitting in the far left corner of my desk. I flipped through the Journal of Arkansas Medical Society, the latest CAP Today, and the Arkansas State Medical Board newsletter. Picked up the August edition of Archives of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine. Hit an article titled "Smart Phone Microscopic Photography: A Novel Tool for Physicians and Trainees."*

I'm a sucker for the latest tech tools, so I read the easy page article eagerly. I was flabbergasted. I could hold up my iphone to the left eyepiece, steady the camera, and take a microscopic pic? One that rivals my $2K microscope camera that is so complicated I get anxiety whenever I decide to use it? Without an app or anything? Unbelievable.

I practiced the image capture that the article described - they were right the steadying of the phone while taking the pic at just the right moment took a bit of practice but five minutes later I had this:

Which I found in a gallbladder. Just kidding. It's a honeybee mouth. I got it at a local science store a few years back, along with a planaria and an ant and a couple of other fun bugs for the kids to play with under my scope when they came up to the office with me occasionally on the weekends.

I used the zoom function on my phone and got rid of the shadowed vignette, just as the article recommended:

Well it is still framed by iphone bars but I imagine this can be taken care of easily. Note how little energy bars I get in my lab basement. The ease and accessibility of this is astounding. Conferences. Sharing hard cases with co-workers (HIPAA restrictions intact and observed, of course). And as the article mentions, high-quality images suitable for presentations, posters, and publications. With your phone.

I ran around in nerdy glee showing off my newfound skill to my fellow pathologists - all as excited and disbelieving as I was and practicing with varying levels of immediate success. My fraternal rival good friend partner caught on quicker than I did capturing a fantastic picture of the lung pleura he was examining (he crowed that it must be his new workout routine). I copied the article and placed it in everyone's box, and noticed that it was written by a dermpath doc I haven't met who works at the University of Arkansas at Medical Sciences - he is a recent transplant and although I spent a day last week visiting all my former attendings and fellow residents (below me!) who are now attendings I haven't met him yet. I hear he's quite good but dermpath is one area I stay away from so I hesitated outside his door and decided familiarity was more important in my limited time off. I enjoyed chatting with a former co-resident who was just hired as chief of pathology at the VA, as well as many others. Man time flies.

*Smart Phone Microscope Photography. A Novel Tool for Physicians and Trainees. Morrison, A.S. and Gardner, J.M. Archives Pathol Lab Med - Vol 138, August 2014.