The culture is placed on the image sensor chip (pictured).
The Android is placed over it on Lego scaffolding (pictured, left). The phone’s LED screen is used as a light source like in a scanner, Wired explains, brightening up the cell and allowing an image to be captured by the sensor.
The whole thing is placed in an incubator with a wire running from the chip to a laptop outside.
As the image sensor takes pictures of the culture, that info is sent to the laptop, giving the researchers images of the cells as they’re growing in real time.
