There are limited healthcare resources in remote parts of the world and ATRFTIR spectroscopy has the potential to be used for point-of-care (POC) diagnostics in these locations, but lacks of a portable blood sample preparation method.This thesis looks at development of a micro fluidic device that would process a single blood sample in order to prepare serum, infected/damaged red blood cells (RBCs), white blood cells (WBCs) and circulating tumour cells (CTCs) for analysis using ATR-FTIR spectroscopy. After exploring a range of micro fluidic bloodseparation methods and manufacturing techniques, a 4-stage design concept is presented in Chapter 2. ATR-FTIR spectroscopy and bespoke Matlab codes are used, in Chapter 3, to evaluate the serum output quality requirement. A series of experiments to determine how to produce serum was carried out, using horseblood. After which, the difference between the spectra from human plasma and serum was investigated, and concluded that plasma was a better output for a POC application. In Chapter 4, a design tool for creating a micro fluidic module that separates the diagnostic outputs from healthy RBCs was being developed. COMSOL Multiphysics and Matlab was used to develop a continuum effectivemedium (CEM) model that simulated the creation of a cell-free layer (CFL), from which the diagnostic outputs could be collected. The CEM model was compared with experiments, which used expansion-contraction geometries manufactured using soft lithography, and it has been shown that this CEM model can simulate the CFL, although more work is needed to fully validate the model. The research carried out in this project has shown that further work is needed in the ATRFTIR spectroscopy field in order to ascertain appropriate design requirements to be able to design and develop an efficient device.
| Date of Award | 14 Sept 2021 |
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| Original language | English |
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| Awarding Institution | - University Of Strathclyde
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| Sponsors | EPSRC (Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council) |
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| Supervisor | Geoffrey McKay (Supervisor), Monica Oliveira (Supervisor) & Nigel Mottram (Supervisor) |
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