Ultrasensitive malaria detection device

该赠款提案是一个小型的，交钥匙的强大设备，将作为一个准确和灵敏的检测器疟疾寄生虫感染的血细胞样本。该设备基于三次谐波产生（THG）光发射，当脉冲超快红外激光聚焦在装有疟疾感染血液的密封样品瓶上时产生。所有的疟原虫都会产生一种叫做疟原虫色素的消化副产品，它是由疟原虫赖以为生的血红蛋白中的血红素废物组成的。当红外激光聚焦在疟原虫色素上时，疟原虫色素会发出强烈的三倍频蓝光。未受感染的血细胞不会发出这种光。这使我们能够从血液样本中明确地检测和计数受感染的细胞，而无需标记细胞，因为THG光仅由寄生虫食物泡中的疟原虫色素产生。该装置将极大地改进流行国家目前使用的主要临床方法，该方法采用寄生虫的Giemsa染色，然后由训练有素的技术人员在光学显微镜下对染色细胞进行耗时的手动计数。与获得寄生虫感染的快速和准确的临床测量相关的问题已经导致疟疾流行国家中疟疾的过度诊断和过度治疗，这是因为与现有的基于染色的临床方法相关的通量问题和专业知识要求。

The grant proposal is for a small, turn-key robust device that would serve as an accurate and sensitive detector of malaria parasite infection in blood cell samples. The device is based on third harmonic generation (THG) light emission that is generated when a pulsed ultrafast infrared laser is focussed on a sealed sample vial containing blood with malaria infection. All malaria parasites produce a digestive by-product called hemozoin which is made of heme waste from the haemoglobin that the parasite feeds on. The hemozoin gives off strong THG blue light when the infrared laser is focussed on it. Uninfected blood cells do not emit this light. This allows us to detect and count infected cells unambiguously from blood samples without having to label the cells because the THG light is only produced by the hemozoin in the food vacuoles of the parasites. This device would greatly improve on the main clinical method currently used in endemic countries that employs Giemsa staining of the parasites followed by time consuming manual counting of the stained cells under an optical microscope by a trained technician. The problems associated with obtaining rapid and accurate clinical measurements of parasite infection has led to over diagnosis and over treatment of malaria in endemic countries because of the throughput problems and expertise requirements associated with the existing staining based clinical methods.