Detecting early-stage malarial infection
New prototype device recognizes electrical properties of infected cells as signatures of disease.
Researchers at MIT have found a way to detect early-stage malarial infection of blood cells by measuring changes in the infected cells’ electrical properties.
The scientists, from the laboratories of MIT’s Anantha Chandrakasan and Subra Suresh — who is now president of Carnegie Mellon University — have built an experimental microfluidic device that takes a drop of blood and streams it across an electrode that measures a signal differentiating infected cells from uninfected cells. The work, published Aug. 8 in the journal Lab on a Chip, is a first step toward a field-ready, low-cost, portable malaria-detection device.
