Optical sensor for rapid on site diagnosis of Covid-19

快速检测护理点对于控制新冠肺炎大流行至关重要。与其他替代方案相比，光学器件提供了实现这一目标的独特优势，包括高灵敏度、小设备尺寸和实时、无标签检测。到目前为止提出的便携式光学传感器依赖于开发完全封装的光学芯片。尽管这些设备可以非常紧凑，但光结果的进出耦合所需的复杂的光学光耦合机制使得这些设备对于大规模部署来说非常昂贵。 这项研究旨在开发一种新的光学传感器技术，用于检测唾液中的SAR-COV-2病毒。传感器将非常紧凑，它将使用商业上可买到的低成本激光二极管和光电探测器，而不是使用复杂的光耦合方案。这种传感器的可用将极大地提高加拿大监测和控制新冠肺炎疫情的能力。

Rapid point of care detection is essential for controlling the Covid-19 pandemic. Optics offer unique advantages compared to other alternatives to achieve this target including high sensitivity, small device size and real time, label free detection. Portable optical sensors proposed so far rely on developing fully packaged optical chips. Although these devices can be very compact, the complicated optical light coupling mechanism required in and out coupling of light results makes these devices very expensive for large scale deployment. The proposed research aims at developing a new optical sensor technology for detection of SAR-COV-2 virus in saliva. The sensor will be very compact, and instead of using complicated light coupling schemes, it will use commercially available low-cost laser diode and photodetectors. Availability of such a sensor will greatly enhance Canadian capability of monitoring and controlling the Covid-19 pandemic.