Microscope relies on hand and finger gestures

Boffins over at the Institute for Molecular Medicine Finland (FIMM) have worked with Finnish company Multitouch to develop a new kind of microscope which ought to get owners of touchscreen-enabled phones excited – since this microscope is able to be controlled using hand and finger gestures. How does this work? Well, it requires the merger of two technologies, which is Web-based virtual microscopy and a huge multitouch display (as seen above). Imagine touching a table, or perhaps, a wall-sized screen for you to navigate and zoom through the microscope sample in a similar manner to that of a conventional microscope. You can also move from the natural size of the sample to a 1000-fold magnification via this method, at which cells as well as subcellular details are made visible to the naked eye. With such a low learning curve, science classes look set to become more interesting.