Description: Malaria is one of the most important infectious diseases in the world, with an estimated 216 million infections and 655,000 deaths in 2010. However, it is estimated that there are an equal number of undocumented deaths so the total annual death toll is more than 1.24 million. Efforts within the past decade have dramatically decreased disease burden in malaria-endemic countries; however, it is still one of the leading causes of morbidity and mortality in children under 5 years of age in Africa. This project tries to implement a system for automated, fast and reliable clinical detection of deadly Plasmodium falciparum malaria parasites. The system is intended to be usable by any individual with access to a smart phone with minimal technical knowledge. Hence, the test station can be moved deep into infected regions on a broad scale providing us with opportunity to reduce number of infections even lower. The system is composed of a low noise and low power consuming analog electrochemical sensor interface paired with a commercial DAC and ADC that are controlled by a microcontroller. The electrochemical interface is low power consuming and automatically adaptable to any sensor conditions. The microcontroller is responsible for generating arbitrary waveform as well has passing massive amounts of data to the smartphone using USB 2.0. The device is powered through the phone USB and requires no external power source.
Investigators: Sina Parsnejad