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Home » Researchers create $550 smartphone-powered point-of-care spectral analyzer

Researchers create $550 smartphone-powered point-of-care spectral analyzer

August 14, 2017 By Fink Densford

Researchers claim to have created a handheld spectral analyzer device which enables smartphones to perform on-demand medical testing that would normally require large, expensive equipment.

The device comes from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and cost the researchers who developed it only $550, according to a press release from the institute.

The spectral transmission-reflectance-intensity analyzer, or TRI Analyzer, was developed to be attached to a smart phone and analyze patient blood, urine or saliva at a level which compares to clinic-based instrumentation.

“Our TRI Analyzer is like the Swiss Army knife of biosensing. It’s capable of performing the 3 most common types of tests in medial diagnostics, so in practice, thousands of already-developed tests could be adapted to it,” Univ. of Illinois Micro + Nanotechnology Lab director Donald Willett said in a press release.

Data from a study of the device was recently published in the journal Lab on a Chip.

The team at the Univ. of Illinois said that while the device was initially designed to perform 2 tests from commercially available assays, a number of diagnostic tests could be adapted for the point-of-care smartphone device.

“The TRIAnalyzer is more of a portable laboratory than a specialized device,” lead author and doctoral student Kenny Long said in a prepared statement.

The TRI Analyzer operates by converting the associated smartphone’s camera into a high performance spectrometer, illuminating a sample of fluid with the smartphones white LED flash, or an inexpensive external green laser diode. Light from the sample is collected through an optical fiber and guided through a diffraction grating into the phone’s rear-facing internal camera.

The system can also measure multiple samples through the use of microfluidic cartridges designed to slide through an opening in the back of a 3D printed cradle specially designed for the system.

“Our Analyzer can scan many tests in a sequence by swiping the cartridge past the readout head, in a similar manner to the way magnetic strip credit cards are swiped,” Long said.

Filed Under: Diagnostics, Research & Development

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