Foldscope: A smartphone based diagnostic tool for fungal keratitis

Smartphone-based microscopy tool like foldscope (FS) may serve the purpose of a low-cost diagnostic alternative to the compound light microscope especially in areas with limited resources. The purpose of this study was to detect fungal pathogens causing keratitis on direct smear by smartphone-mounted FS and to evaluate the efficacy of FS against routine compound light microscope (CLM).

The prospective study was conducted at a tertiary eye care center from September 2019 to March 2020. The study included 60 smear examinations (Gram stain [GM] n = 30, Lactophenol Cotton Blue [LCB] n = 30) to detect fungal pathogens from corneal scraping material of clinically suspected fungal keratitis (FK) cases. The diagnostic utility of FS was compared with CLM for both GM and LCB wet mount. Data collected were used to quantify the agreement using Cohen's kappa between CLM and FS imaging.

Forty-six samples out of 60 were positive for fungi using CLM. GM stain and LCB showed 22/30 (73.33%) and 24/30 (80%) positive results with CLM, respectively. Moderate agreement (0.49) was observed between CLM and FS with the smartphone method. LCB mount showed high specificity of 1.00 over 0.87 of GM stain for FS with the smartphone.

Direct smear can be an early and sensitive measure to diagnose FK other than clinical suspicion. The smartphone-mounted FS has limited sensitivity as an alternative to CLM, but excellent specificity in the present study for FK. The FS as a smartphone-based diagnostic tool is simple, portable, and inexpensive in resource-constrained rural or remote clinical and public health settings in the absence of CLM and other higher diagnostic modalities.