TITLE:
Photo-Thermal Induced Optical Scattering Modulation Sensor for Malaria Diagnosis
AUTHORS:
Daniel Maitethia Memeu, Merenga Abdallah Sarroney, Ciira Maina
KEYWORDS:
Photothermal Induced Optical Scattering Modulation, Photoacoustic Probing, Hemozoin, Hemoglobin, Probe Beam, Excitation Beam
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Biophysics,
Vol.8 No.4,
September
13,
2018
ABSTRACT: Malaria is one of the leading killer diseases in sub-Saharan Africa. Although the disease is curable, early and accurate diagnosis is key to effective therapy. Existing malaria diagnostic techniques have low detection accuracy especially when the parasite load in the blood is low. In this paper, we report on a simple photo-thermal based technique for detection of the Plasmodium parasites’ biomarker (hemozoin) in blood smear samples. The technique has demonstrated 100% Plasmodium detection sensitivity and specificity from the ten blood smear test samples used.