Title: Out-of-plane valve for blood separation and metering: towards lab-in-a-tube applications for blood diagnostics

Authors: Tingjie Li; Yaxi Fan; Qiuquan Guo; Limin Zhang; Jun Yang

Addresses: Department of Mechanical and Materials Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, The University of Western Ontario, N6A 5B9, Canada ' Department of Mechanical and Materials Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, The University of Western Ontario, N6A 5B9, Canada ' Biomedical Engineering Program, Faculty of Engineering, The University of Western Ontario, N6A 5B9, Canada ' Department of Mechanical and Materials Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, The University of Western Ontario, N6A 5B9, Canada ' Department of Mechanical and Materials Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, The University of Western Ontario, N6A 5B9, Canada; Department of Mechanical and Materials Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, The University of Western Ontario, N6A 5B9, Canada

Abstract: Diagnostics plays a critical role in human health, while blood analysis is one of the most common clinical diagnoses. Biomedical engineers have been developing technologies that can robotically perform accurate and rapid blood analysis for field application. The simplified fabrication processes and low cost materials become the tendency of point-of-care (POC) devices for blood analysis. Recently, lab-in-a-tube technique comes up as a simple and robust method for POC measurements of multiple analytes. This paper proposed a tubing system with out-of-plane valves using tygon tubing assembled on a circular disc (CD) for blood separation. Pure plasma could be achieved within minutes after extracting blood from human body. The out-of-plane valve showed excellent capability in preventing backflow and reverse mixing due to diffusion. Therefore, the lab-in-a-tube platform has promising applications for the automation of POC analysis, especially important for the rural areas without enough medical resources.

Keywords: out-of-plane valves; lab-in-a-tube; blood diagnostics; blood separation; blood metering; blood analysis; biomedical engineering; pure plasma; backflow; reverse mixing; rural areas; bioengineering; remote areas; medical diagnosis.

DOI: 10.1504/IJMRS.2013.051301

International Journal of Mechanisms and Robotic Systems, 2013 Vol.1 No.1, pp.83 - 94

Received: 02 Apr 2012
Accepted: 05 Sep 2012
Published online: 12 Jul 2014 *

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