silicon and Malaria--Falciparum

Optical spectrophotometry has been explored to quantify Plasmodium falciparum malaria parasites at low parasitemia, with potential to overcome the limitations of detection in the current diagnostic methods. This work presents the design, simulation and fabrication of a CMOS microelectronic detection system to automatically quantify the presence of malaria parasites in a blood sample.. The designed system is composed by an array of 16 n+/p-substrate silicon junction photodiodes as photodetectors and 16 current to frequency (IF) converters. An optical setup was used to individually and jointly characterize the entire system.. The microsystem was able to distinguish between healthy and infected RBCs, with a sensitivity of 4.5 Hz/parasites.μL. The developed microsystem presents a competitive result, when compared to the gold standard diagnosis methods, with increased potential for malaria in field diagnosis.

Topics: Humans; Malaria; Malaria, Falciparum; Parasitemia; Plasmodium falciparum; Sensitivity and Specificity; Silicon; Spectrophotometry