Portable Point-of-Care Device for Blood Coagulation Measurement
Senior Team Design and Fabrication Project in collaboration with Joshua Dabbous, Andrea Salazar, and mentor Dr. Yuan Gao
For the Fall 2023-Spring 2024 academic year, I was assigned to a team along with two of my fellow senior classmates, and guided by a faculty mentor. Our team was called Coagulation Innovations, my partners were Joshua Dabbous (pictured on the right) and Andrea Salazar (pictured second from the right), our mentor was Dr. Yuan Gao (pictured on the left), a professor within the Mechanical Engineering Department of the college, whose research areas include lab-on-a-chip, microfluidics, microfabrication, acoustic bubbles, and biomedical applications, and our client was the Herff College of Engineering Mechanical Engineering Department. Our team was tasked with researching, designing, and ultimately fabricating a functional, portable Point-of-Care diagnostic device for blood coagulation measurement. The objective of this project was to create a device capable of measuring the blood coagulation levels of individual patients to aid in clinical, surgical, and pharmaceutical practices, while combatting the bulkiness, costliness, and extensive training required for the operation of current commercial devices typically used for this purpose.
The motivation behind the project was to revolutionize the technology used for blood coagulation measurement in various medical practices. Its applications range from constant monitoring during surgical procedures, to aid in the prevention of exsanguination during operation, to detecting diseases recognizable by irregular blood coagulation levels in a clinical setting (such as thrombosis, strokes, and cardiovascular diseases), to developing and improving upon pharmaceutical drugs for the prevention and treatment of these diseases.
The fabrication method selected for this design was Xurography, the process of 2D modeling a channel system in multiple layers, using a precision cutting machine to cut this design into our selected material, a transparent double-sided adhesive (ARCare 90445Q by Adhesives Research, Inc.), then peeling and sticking the cut layers to assemble the device. Our design consisted of three layers: a bottom layer of a glass microscope slide that was treated to reduce friction levels as fluid travels through the device, an adhesive middle layer (including an inlet where the sample fluid would be injected, a main channel for the fluid to travel through, an angled bubble cavity which would trap an air bubble using the pressure of the fluid flowing past it, and an outlet where the fluid would exit), and a non-adhesive top layer with only an inlet and outlet, so as to contain the fluid within the channel of the device as it flows through.
Our final device was then connected to acoustic transducers, which applied acoustic waves to the sample fluid that, in turn, induced motion of the particles within the fluid at the air-liquid interface within the bubble cavity. Using a powerful microscope paired with a high-speed camera, the team could then observe and measure the velocities of these particles and relate these velocities to the size of red blood cell aggregations that formed in the tested samples. This relation would provide valuable insight into the blood coagulation level of the sample, which, when compared to a baseline for an individual patient, could aid in the monitoring of the properties of their blood.
The project demonstrated that with increasing blood cell aggregation levels, the velocity of moving particles within the sample fluid decrease, as predicted. With a baseline from any given patient, this device would accomplish all of the objectives applicable to the medical practices it was designed to. However, with further development, and looking ahead to future advancements, the device could be paired with a more compact high-speed camera and acoustic transducer to make the accompanying equipment truly portable, the use of AI could be employed to automatically measure the exact sizes of blood cell aggregations and particle velocities, the need for patient baselines could be completely eliminated with more advanced calibration, and the fabrication of the entire device could be manufactured for commercialization, making this technology not only more accessible to clinics, hospitals, and pharmaceutical development facilities, but also to patients themselves.
