New microscope uses A.I. smarts to diagnose deadly blood infections

As technology goes, microscopes are pretty smart, allowing us to examine samples blown up thousands of times their original size. But what if a microscope was able to identify what it was looking at? And what if this capability could be used to save people's lives? That's the idea behind new work carried out by microbiologists at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC), a teaching hospital at Harvard Medical School. Researchers there have developed a microscope that's enhanced by machine learning technology to help diagnose potentially deadly blood infections, greatly improving patients' odds of survival in the process.