I-Corps: Acoustic tweezing elastometry

这个i-Corps项目的更广泛的影响/商业潜力在于用于生物材料、聚合物液体和复杂流体的流变性测试的新型非接触技术。在医疗保健行业中使用时，这种声学镊子流变仪技术可以使用手指刺破采集的少量血液样本而不是静脉穿刺术来快速可靠地评估血液凝固情况。此外，用于血浆凝血分析的光-光测试可以与用于全血分析的粘弹性测试集成在声钳设备中。声波镊子技术可以显著提高美国和世界各地数以百万计的创伤、大手术和凝血障碍患者的护理质量。该技术在石油工业中的潜在应用是可靠、准确地测量原油的流变性和老化程度，这对制定最佳的开采和运输策略具有重要意义。在化工和制药行业，这项技术对于制备具有所需性能的聚合物材料和小规模无容器加工独特的聚合物材料非常有用，这些独特的聚合物材料没有聚合物与固体壁接触时产生的杂质。这项i-Corps项目进一步开发了一种非接触式声波镊子技术，其中通过声辐射力将一滴流体样品悬浮在空气中，并通过液滴形状的变化测量其随时间变化的流变特性。使用实验室原型进行测试的这项技术的关键颠覆性特征是，非接触式测量提高了可靠性和准确性，能够评估聚合和凝聚等过程中流变性的时间变化，所需样品体积小，程序时间相对较短。该项目的目标是在医疗保健、石油、化工和制药行业开展有针对性的客户发现工作，以评估声波镊子技术的商业潜力。

The broader impact/commercial potential of this I-Corps project lies in novel non-contact technology for rheological testing of biological materials, polymeric liquids, and complex fluids. When used in healthcare industry, this acoustic tweezing rheometry technology allows for fast and reliable assessment of blood coagulation using small blood samples collected by a finger prick instead of venipuncture. Additionally, photo-optical tests used in plasma coagulation assays can be integrated in the acoustic tweezing device with viscoelastic tests used in whole blood analysis. The acoustic tweezing technology can dramatically improve the quality of care for millions of trauma, major surgery and coagulation disorders patients in the United States and worldwide. When used in petroleum industry, the potential application of the technology is reliable and accurate measurement of rheology and aging of crude oils, which is important for formulating optimal strategies for their extraction and transportation. In chemical and pharmaceutical industries, the technology could be very useful for preparation of polymer materials with required properties and small-scale containerless processing of unique polymer materials that lack impurities generated during polymer contact with solid walls.This I-Corps project further develops a non-contact acoustic tweezing technology in which a drop of a fluid sample is levitated in air by acoustic radiation forces and its time-dependent rheological properties are measured from drop shape changes. Key disruptive features of this technology, tested using the laboratory prototype, are the increased reliability and accuracy due to non-contact measurement, the ability to assess temporal changes in rheological properties during processes such as polymerization and coagulation, small sample volume requirement and relatively short procedure time. The goal of this project is to do focused customer discovery work in the healthcare, petroleum, chemical and pharmaceutical industries to evaluate the commercial potential of the acoustic tweezing technology.