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In the drive to miniaturize laboratory tools, to create a so-called lab on a chip, the conventional light microscope has been a stumbling block. Microscopes require lenses and, above all, space to focus and magnify images. Changhuei Yang and colleagues at the California Institute of Technology have developed a different approach, one that eliminates the need for lenses and space. In their device, called an optofluidic microscope, a specimen passes directly over a digital imaging chip that is masked by a metal film with a micron-size hole over each pixel. By arranging the holes in a certain way and illuminating the specimen as it flows at a constant rate over the chip, a high-resolution image can be obtained. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]