Mosquito-transmitted diseases such as malaria, dengue and yellow fever are responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths every year. A new low-cost imaging system could make it easier to track mosquito species that carry disease, enabling a more timely and targeted response.

«A remote system like ours can dramatically reduce the labor needed to monitor mosquitos in a given area, thus greatly increasing the capability to do more monitoring,» said research team leader Adam Goodwin from Johns Hopkins University, USA. «If you can provide more mosquito data, then you will more quickly catch outbreaks and save more lives.»

In The Optical Society (OSA) journal Biomedical Optics Express, Goodwin and colleagues’ paper is part of a feature issue on Optical Technologies for Improving Healthcare in Low-Resource Settings. In the paper, they describe the new system, which is designed to transmit images from inside a mosquito trap that are detailed enough for entomologists to distinguish mosquito wing patterns and the color of scales, features that indicate whether a mosquito is a species that carries disease. This information can be used to plan interventions that work best against that species.

«The new system is a classic application of an internet of things (IoT) device,» said Goodwin. «It could eventually be paired with computer vision algorithms to automatically determine species and provide that information to public health systems.»

Developing a remote imaging trap

In the many areas of the world where mosquito-transmitted disease is problematic, understanding which mosquito species are present in what numbers requires continually trapping mosquitoes at multiple locations. A worker must then drive around a county or region to drop off and pick up hundreds of traps per week and bring the specimens back to the lab to be identified under a microscope.

Story Source: Materials provided by The Optical Society. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.