One of the main concerns when becoming a Live and Dry Blood Analyst is how choose the right equipment for the job - especially if you know nothing about how microscopes work and what the different specifications mean.

It can be very difficult to decide which model you should buy and how much you need to spend. When you search the internet for a live blood microscope you can find models from £300/$400 to well over £5000/$7000!

Some people feel that if they buy the most expensive equipment and/or specialist analysis software then they will have an all singing, all dancing setup, practically capable of analysing the blood for them!

Unfortunately this is not the case - in reality you can easily end up spending far more than necessary. Also, regardless of the equipment that you choose, the analysing process itself will always be your job - not the microscope’s or that of any fancy software.

Conversely, some people will be understandably concerned about the costs of entering this field and tempted to spend too little. Unfortunately this often means that they end up with a microscope that really does not live up to its advertised promise, nor offer a high enough quality of image to analyse blood effectively.

After receiving a number of enquiries from students wanting to know if a budget Amscope microscope would be up to the task, we got hold of one and ran it through its paces. So did it make the grade?

The Amscope T490 Darkfield Microscope

The Amscope T490 costs approximately £440 / $800 and is marketed as a live blood microscope, even showing a picture of live blood using darkfield lighting in its promotional photos.

I received the microscope (no manual included - I had to email them to send it to me!), set it up, took some blood samples and started mounting the slides…..

Light Source & Image Strength

Using the objectives with the lower magnifications - the 4x and 10x - were not a problem, but once I went up to the 40x the microscope struggled.

The thing you need to understand about darkfield microscopy is that the light that is projected up through the sample on the slide is partially blocked by the microscope’s condenser, reducing its intensity.

The light doesn't flow directly through the sample and into the objective. Instead it is diverted by the darkfield condenser so that the light shines through the sample at an angle. This illuminates the very fine structures within the cells of the blood which, if the light were to flow directly through, would be almost invisible.

A detailed explanation of darkfield microscopy and the lighting process needed can be found here.

Cheaper microscopes such as this one only use 3W LED lights - this is NOT strong enough to illuminate the blood in darkfield. The light is partially blocked and what is left is not powerful enough for the higher magnification objectives. Without enough light, you can't see what you need to see in the blood sample.

Objective Apertures

The second issue is based on objective apertures. Inside the objectives are multiple lenses that collect and concentrate the light and magnify the image. The aperture is the size of the opening in the lens that allows light through.

In cheaper models such as this, the aperture of the light coming through the darkfield condenser does not match the aperture in the higher magnification objectives. This results in the light simply missing the lens in the objective.

The light has to shine up through a tiny hole in the lens and if it is not concentrated and centred, when you swing the objective into place over the sample you will only get a small percentage of the light reaching the lens. The result is a very dimly lit image with almost no contrast, which you simply cannot analyse.

Digital Imaging

Spending money on a fancy camera unfortunately will not fix the problems. The camera does not magnify the sample, it only magnifies what the objectives can see. This leads me to my third issue with this microscope - using a camera.

My camera (Canon DSLR) could not pick up what I was seeing through the microscope’s binoculars. The camera requires enough light hitting its sensor to "see" anything, but there was not enough light intensity (see above) to travel up the photo turret to the camera.

This means that you cannot show clients their blood while you are analysing it unless you let them see it through the binoculars. It also means that you can't record your clients blood unless you fiddle with the settings and overexpose the picture and capture it that way. But this is not useful in a clinical setting at all.

Live Blood Results

IMG 1- this is using the 4x objective - this didn't need any over exposure because there is more light entering the lower magnification objectives.

IMG 2 - this is using the 10x - same as above.

IMG 3 - this is using the 40x objective - to get this photo I had to over-expose it - but this is more or less how the sample appears through the binoculars. As you can see, there is not enough light to be able to assess the state of the cells or the plasma properly.

IMG 4 - this is the blood sample as seen through the 100x objective - same technique as above for getting a picture. This is not true darkfield - the light is distorting which causes a halo effect around the cells obscuring detail.

As a comparison, the above image was taken using a 100x objective on a Brunel Haemascope. This microscope uses a 150W halogen bulb - the best lighting that you can get for darkfield. The strength of light source and the quality of the objective means that you can clearly see details within cells, on cell membranes and pick out fine details in the plasma.

Dry Blood Analysis

The analysis of dry blood is never an issue in cheaper microscopes because it uses brightfield not darkfield microscopy, which requires much less light.

A 3W LED light is perfectly adequate to illuminate the sample and in fact you will find you need to have the light on a very low setting so that it doesn't hurt your eyes.

Using higher magnification objectives is not a problem with dry blood analysis as you only use the 4x and possibly the 10x for the dry blood - you are not viewing individual cells in dry blood but rather the overall pattern.

Conclusion

As you have seen, the low-powered light source and the low-quality objectives that come with the Amscope T490 mean that this microscope is not suitable for live blood analysis and really shouldn’t be marketed as such. The image gained at 100x magnification is not true darkfield, and neither of the higher objectives offered a quality of image anywhere near what is required to analyse blood effectively.

Some suggestions

Although I would not recommend buying the Amscope, I have been asked if it is possible to adapt this cheap microscope in order to improve it. Here are some possible suggestions of how that might be achieved:

Light - you need to get more of it through the objective or else nothing changes. You could experiment with using fibre optic light boxes that have gooseneck lights and shine it up through the dark field objective. You can find these online for about £200/$275. You need to get the brightest light you can and if possible use a halogen light source.

IF that works the next step is to improve the objective - EVEN in Amscope’s own promotional video for their darkfield microscope they admit that the objectives that come with the microscope will not give you a true darkfield. You need to upgrade your 100x objective to get one with an adjustable aperture so you can direct more light through its lenses. These 100x objectives can cost £300/$400 or more.

Please note: These are just suggestions and we in no way guarantee that they would make the Amscope a viable option.

Microscopes that we do recommend

The microscopes that we recommend for our students offer excellent value, are great quality and, most importantly, they work. We wouldn’t recommend anything that we haven’t used ourselves first. Click here for more details.

Please do your research and feel free to ask us at info@naturecureacademy.com for help in choosing your microscope.

Alternatively join our private facebook group where we discuss microscopes and much more - Learning Live Blood Analysis.

Happy microscope hunting!

Review of the Amscope T490 Budget Darkfield Microscope