Evaluation of SH-SAW Biosensor in Whole Blood

This report introduces potentials of shear horizontal surface acoustic wave (SH-SAW) biosensor in point-of-care-testing (POCT) applications. In realizing POCT devices, SH-SAW biosensor has many technical features which enables a simple structure to reduce device costs and an easy operation to reduce workloads. In order to demonstrate SH-SAW biosensor performances, experimental results measured actual donor whole-bloods which is collected at a hospital and contain useful-clinical biomarker are described. The results show excellent correlation with standard analyzer which is used in hospital laboratory. This result suggests that SH-SAW biosensor has strong potential in POCT application.

I. Introduction

Infectious diseases, including HIV, Hepatitis, Influenza, Zika viruses, and so on, are transmitted to patients subconsciously and become epidemic unpredictably. Once epidemic happened, it brings not only health sufferings, but also economic losses, infectious diseases are serious threats to human beings. In fighting to infectious diseases, early case detection is considered important to prevent epidemics. To increase the efficiencies of early detection, patient side diagnostics, which is in most cases conducted outside hospital and known and described as point-of-care testing (POCT) has a considerable importance. In this kind use, diagnostic devices are required different features from conventional hospital use analyzers, such as mobility and operability in the field. Shear-Horizontal SAW (SH-SAW) based immunoreaction biosensor is one of the promising devices in this kind of appreciation. One of the most distinctive features of SH-SAW biosensor is to be able to detect immunoreaction without bond/free, B/F, separation. This feature makes SH-SAW biosensor a dominant candidate in expecting mobile diagnostic applications.