New prototype device recognizes electrical properties of infected cells as signatures of disease

New prototype device recognizes electrical properties of infected cells as signatures of disease: Several types of infection, including malaria, alter a cell's impedance...

To find out, first authors... built a microfluidic device capable of measuring the magnitude and phase of the electrical impedance of individual cells. The device is essentially a cell-counting device, similar in approach to other low-cost, portable devices being developed to diagnose illnesses such as HIV.
The challenge, however, involved optimizing the electronics to allow very accurate measurements of impedance for each cell as it passes by...
In tests of cells of four cell types—uninfected cells and infected cells at the ring, trophozoite and schizont stages—the device detected small differences in measures of magnitude and seemingly random differences in phase, but not quite enough to definitively differentiate among stages.
However, by mathematically combining the measures into an index called delta, the differences between uninfected cells and all three stages became clear.