Impedance-based Rapid Diagnostic Tool for Single Malaria Parasite Detection

• Published in: IEEE transactions on biomedical circuits and systems Vol. 16; no. 6; pp. 1 - 10
• Main Authors: Giacometti, Marco, Pravettoni, Tommaso, Barsotti, Jonathan, Milesi, Francesca, Figares, Caina de Oliveira, Maspero, Federico, Coppadoro, Lorenzo P., Benevento, Giovanni, Ciardo, Mariagrazia, Alano, Pietro, Fiore, Gianfranco B., Bertacco, Riccardo, Ferrari, Giorgio
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States IEEE 01.12.2022; The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
• Subjects: Animals; biosensor; Current measurement; diagnostic; Diseases; Electric Impedance; Electronic systems; Erythrocytes; health; hemozoin; Humans; Impedance; impedance detection; Impedance measurement; lab-on-a-chip; lock-in amplifier; Magnetic field measurement; Magnetic properties; magnetophoresis; Malaria; Malaria - diagnosis; Malaria - parasitology; Microbalances; Microelectrodes; Nickel; Parasites; plasmodium; Plasmodium falciparum; Rapid Diagnostic Tests; Reproducibility of Results; Semiconductor device measurement; Silicon; Silicon substrates; Temperature measurement; Vector-borne diseases
• ISSN: 1932-4545; 1940-9990
• DOI: 10.1109/TBCAS.2022.3215586

This paper presents a custom, low-cost electronic system specifically designed for rapid and quantitative detection of the malaria parasite in a blood sample. The system exploits the paramagnetic properties of malaria-infected red blood cells (iRBCs) for their magnetophoretic capture on the surface of a silicon chip. A lattice of nickel magnetic micro-concentrators embedded in a silicon substrate concentrates the iRBCs above coplanar gold microelectrodes separated by 3 μm for their detection through an impedance measurement. The sensor is designed for a differential operation to remove the large contribution given by the blood sample. The electronic readout automatically balances the sensor before each experiment and reaches a resolution of 15 ppm in the impedance measurement at 1 MHz allowing a limit of detection of 40 parasite/μl with a capture time of 10 minutes. For better reliability of the results, four sensors are acquired during the same experiment. We demonstrate that the realized platform can also detect a single infected cell in real experimental conditions, measuring human blood infected by Plasmodium falciparum malaria specie.