It’s relatively easy to understand how optical microscopes work at low magnifications: one lens magnifies an image, the next magnifies the already-magnified image, and so on until it reaches the eye ...

William T. Freeman is the Thomas and Gerd Perkins Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT. His research spans mid-level vision, audio, and computational photography.

Scientists have developed and built a thumbnail sized microscope that magnifies without lenses. They said it is one of the biggest innovations since the microscope was invented 500 years ago. They ...