Mobile ELISA with a Transparent Incubator.

Enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) is one of the most important technologies for biochemical testing critical for diagnosis and monitoring of many diseases. Traditional systems for ELISA incubation and reading are expensive and bulky, thus cannot be used at point-of-care or in the field. Here, we designed and demonstrated a new miniature mobile phone-based system for ELISA. This mHealth system can be used to complete all steps of the assay, including incubation and reading. It can be fabricated at low cost, it is portable, and can transfer test results via mobile phone. We have designed incubation chamber, imaging enclosure, and data processing algorithm. We demonstrate how mobile ELISA can be calibrated for accurate measurements of cortisol and show successful measurements with the calibrated system. We show that the results acquired with our prototype match well the results obtained with the gold standard.

Different Regimes of Opto-fluidics for Biological Manipulation.

Metallic structures can be used for the localized heating of fluid and the controlled generation of microfluidic currents. Carefully designed currents can move and trap small particles and cells. Here we demonstrate a new bi-metallic substrate that allows much more powerful micro-scale manipulation. We show that there are multiple regimes of opto-fluidic manipulation that can be controlled by an external laser power. While the lowest power does not affect even small objects, medium power can be used for efficiently capturing and trapping particles and cells. Finally, the high-power regime can be used for 3D levitation that, for the first time, has been demonstrated in this paper. Additionally, we demonstrate opto-fluidic manipulation for an extraordinarily dynamic range of masses extending eight orders of magnitude: from 80 fg nano-wires to 5.4 µg live worms.

Mobile phone based ELISA (MELISA).

Enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) is one of the most important technologies for biochemical analysis critical for diagnosis and monitoring of many diseases. Traditional systems for ELISA incubation and reading are expensive and bulky, thus cannot be used at point-of-care or in the field. Here, we propose and demonstrate a new miniature mobile phone based system for ELISA (MELISA). This system can be used to complete all steps of the assay, including incubation and reading. It weighs just 1 pound, can be fabricated at low cost, portable, and can transfer test results via mobile phone. We successfully demonstrated how MELISA can be calibrated for accurate measurements of progesterone and demonstrated successful measurements with the calibrated system.