Optofluidic device for waterborne pathogen identification

Abstract

Waterborne diseases are caused by consuming unsafe and dirty water. Infection diseases or illnesses are spread mostly through contaminated drinking water and unsanitary conditions. According to World Health Organization, water related diseases have caused millions of death and also contributed to many chronic diseases and illnesses in humans and animals. It has been a pressing issue and real concern for our society to eliminate them from our drinking source.For people to lead a healthy and safe lifestyle, it is important to have an effective and reliable microbial testing system that can identify protozoa species from our drinking supplies. This system is able to detect microbal species in real-time and provide an early warning of pathogen contamination events. Microfluidics is a powerful tool for analyzing small microorganisms. The narrow channel sections are capable to precisely manipulate particles of different size through acoustic focusing technique. This project discuss about the working principles of Acoustophoretic microfluidic chip and how acoustic focusing separate the large particles from small particles to facilitate precise particle characterization. The use of multi-angle light scattering (MALS) is also discussed as it able to develop unique signatures that aids in the classification of complex biological particles. To determine the scattering pattern of different pathogen, Principal Component Analysis (PCA) will be introduced. The project basically focuses on real-time detection and classification of the microbial species for continuous water surveillance. Experiments conducted will demonstrate the detection capabilities of the newly developed optofluidic system.