[_Jim]

I need Karnac’s power to really deduce what ‘magic’ it was they pulled off here ... suffice to to say, the use of a 2-D focal plane solid-state imaging array (as used in a cell phone or cheap camera) is the heart of this device; said researcher, however, didn’t just order several focal plane array imagers from a vendor or chip supplier, but rather adapted already constructed devices to a different purpose, saving him the trouble of designing/developing the hardware/firmware drivers (incl software) to make the imagers usable (extracting the 2-D array of ‘light’ data appearing on the top of the sensor/imager chip) ...

[spunkets]

They're simply taking a pic of a flat surface with monochromatic light, so the image is a hologram. They're not actually looking at images of the cells, just the phase/interference info recorded in the camera's sensor array from combined reflections unique to that "surface finish". The surface is composed of a monolayer of ~2μm high discs with a diameter of ~8μm for red blood cells and ~2μm larger for white cells. It may someday provide for RBC and WBC counts/densities.