System and methods for remote assessment of a sample assay for disease diagnostics

A system, comprising:

• an enclosure including a dark chamber, the enclosure configured to block ambient light from entering the dark chamber;
• a cartridge aperture on a side of the enclosure to enable a sample cartridge to be disposed at least partially inside the dark chamber, wherein the cartridge aperture is configured to at least partially close when the sample cartridge is at least partially disposed inside the dark chamber;
• a light emitting device in an interior portion of the enclosure, the light emitting device configured to emit a fluorescence excitation light directed to the sample cartridge;
• an optical coupler inside the enclosure to form a partial image of the sample cartridge in a sensor array of an image-capturing device, when the sample cartridge is at least partially disposed in the dark chamber;
• and
• an image-capturing application configured to integrate multiple pixel counts separately for different color pixels in a sensor array of the image-capturing device.

A computer-implemented method, comprising:

• identifying, upon receipt of a user input, a fiduciary figure in a bottom side of an enclosure with an image-capturing device;
• adjusting, in the image-capturing device, an optical coupling to obtain a sharp image of the fiduciary figure;
• identifying a sensitive area of a sample cartridge within a field of view of the optical coupling;
• finding a border of the sensitive area of the sample cartridge and applying geometrical transformations on an area delimited by the border of the sample cartridge;
• identifying a target region within the sensitive area of the sample cartridge;
• integrating, with the image-capturing application, multiple pixel counts separately for different color pixels in a sensor array of the image-capturing device;
• extracting a value of a selected color for multiple pixels in the target region;
• and
• determining a presence of a target analyte when the value of the selected color is greater than a pre-selected threshold.