Search

Recent advances in MEMS technology have provided an opportunity to develop microfluidic devices with enormous potential for portable, point-of-care, low-cost medical diagnostic tools. Hand-held flow cytometers will soon be used in disease diagnosis and monitoring. Despite much interest in miniaturizing commercially available cytometers, they remain costly, bulky, and require expert operation. In this article, we report progress on the development of a battery-powered handheld blood analyzer that will quickly and automatically process a drop of whole human blood by real-time, on-chip magnetic separation of white blood cells (WBCs), fluorescence analysis of labeled WBC subsets, and counting a reproducible fraction of the red blood cells (RBCs) by light scattering. The whole blood (WB) analyzer is composed of a micro-mixer, a special branching/separation system, an optical detection system, and electronic readout circuitry. A droplet of un-processed blood is mixed with the reagents, i.e. magnetic beads and fluorescent stain in the micro-mixer. Valve-less sorting is achieved by magnetic deflection of magnetic microparticle-labeled WBC. LED excitation in combination with an avalanche photodiode (APD) detection system is used for counting fluorescent WBC subsets using several colors of immune-Qdots, while counting a reproducible fraction of red blood cells (RBC) is performed using a laser light scatting measurement with a photodiode. Optimized branching/channel width is achieved using Comsol Multi-Physics™ simulation. To accommodate full portability, all required power supplies (40v, ±10V, and +3V) are provided via step-up voltage converters from one battery. A simple onboard lock-in amplifier is used to increase the sensitivity/resolution of the pulse counting circuitry.

Due to a number of recent technological advances, a hand-held flow cytometer can be achieved by use of semiconductor illuminators, optical sensors (all battery powered) and sensitive cell markers such as immuno-quantum dot (Qdot) labels. The specific application described is of a handheld blood analyzer that can quickly process a drop of whole, unfractionated human peripheral blood by real-time, on-chip magnetic separation of white blood cells (WBCs) and red blood cells (RBCs) and further fluorescence analysis of Qdot labeled WBC subsets. Various microfluidic patterns were fabricated in PDMS and used to characterize flow of single cells and magnetic deflection of magnetically labeled cells. An LED excitation, avalanche photodiode detection system (SensL Technologies, Ltd., Cork, Ireland) was used for immuno-Qdot detection of WBC subsets. A static optical setup was used to determine the sensitivity of the detection system. In this work we demonstrate: valve-less, on-chip magnetic sorting of immunomagnetically labeled white blood cells, bright Qdot labeling of lymphocytes, and counting of labeled white blood cells. Comparisons of these results with conventional flow cytometric analyses are reported. Sample preparation efficiency was determined by labeling of isolated white blood cells. Appropriate flow rates were determined for optical detection and confirmed with flowing particles. Several enabling technologies required for a truly portable, battery powered, hand-held flow cytometer for use in future point-of-care diagnostic devices have been demonstrated. The combining of these technologies into an integrated handheld instrument is in progress and results on whole blood cell analysis are to be reported in another paper.