Proceedings Article | 3 February 2012
Proc. SPIE. 8251, Microfluidics, BioMEMS, and Medical Microsystems X
KEYWORDS: Microfluidics, Blood, Electrodes, Particles, Diagnostics, Dielectrophoresis, Wave propagation, Transducers, Acoustics, Liquids
Infectious diseases cause 10 million deaths each year worldwide, accounting for ~60% of all deaths of children aged 5-
14. Although these deaths arise primarily through pneumonia, TB, malaria and HIV, there are also the so called
"neglected diseases" such as sleeping sickness and bilharzia, which have a devastating impact on rural communities, in
sub-Sahara Africa. There, the demands for a successful Developing World diagnostic are particularly rigorous, requiring
low cost instrumentation with low power consumption (there is often no fixed power infrastructure). In many cases, the
levels of infection within individuals are also sufficiently low that instruments must show extraordinary sensitivity, with
measurements being made in blood or saliva. In this talk, a description of these demands will be given, together with a
review of some of the solutions that have been developed, which include using acoustics, optics and electrotechnologies,
and their combinations to manipulate the fluid samples. In one example, we show how to find a single trypanosome, as
the causative agent of sleeping sickness.
