Although India worked relentlessly towards developing innovative testing solutions for COVID-19 throughout last year, the timely detection of a number of other infectious diseases got sidelined
IIT-D creates handheld device for detection of dengue & HIV
15 April 2021 | News The handheld device has been successfully tested on clinical blood samples
The GLancing Angle Deposition (GLAD) research group at IIT Delhi’s Physics Department has developed a handheld Surface Enhanced Raman Spectroscopy (SERS) based platform for early diagnosis of dengue virus. It also gives dengue test results within one hour (rapid diagnosis).
The handheld device has been successfully tested on the clinical blood samples collected from hundreds of individuals in collaboration with ICMR-National Institute of Malaria Research (NIMR), New Delhi.
The intergrated device was able to clearly differentiate the three sets of blood samples; dengue positive, negative and healthy. This method provides a sensitive, rapid, and field deployable diagnosis of dengue at the early stage.
It has been successfully tested on clinical blood samples
Researchers at the Indian Institute of Technology here have developed a handheld Surface Enhanced Raman Spectroscopy (SERS)-based platform for early diagnosis of dengue and also gives dengue test results within one hour (rapid diagnosis).
HIV detection
The institute said that the handheld device has been successfully tested on the clinical blood samples collected from hundreds of individuals in collaboration with ICMR-National Institute of Malaria Research (NIMR), New Delhi, and also helps in rapid detection of HIV.
Conventional tools
“Early diagnosis of dengue is the key to prevent deterioration of a patient’s health. However, conventional diagnostic tools like nucleic acid detection using Reverse Transcriptase Polymerase Chain Reaction (RT-PCR) is a time-taking process and it also requires expensive equipment and reagents for the diagnosis of dengue,” the institute said outlining the need for the device.
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The ongoing coronavirus pandemic results from one of the deadliest infections this generation has seen: SARS-CoV-2. The situation has overwhelmed healthcare institutions worldwide and highlighted the need for high-throughput virus sensing methods to assist in the rapid and early diagnosis of the virus and associated diseases.
Early identification is central to controlling the pandemic, and vibrational optical spectroscopy techniques such as Raman spectroscopy could be key. The method provides results in real-time and is non-destructive, non-invasive, and highly specific.
Raman Spectroscopy Explained
When light hits a sample, it is scattered in different directions and mostly exhibits the same wavelength as the original light. However, sometimes the light is inelastically scattered. This means the incident light turns energy to molecular vibration and exchanges energy with the sample, changing the light wavelength.