Rapid Screening of Diabetic Retinopathy from Tear Fluid-Proteins Using a SAW-based Acoustofluidic System*

This study aims to enhance the fluorescent signal of trace tear fluid proteins by surface acoustic wave (SAW). Due to various acoustic radiation forces exerted on particles and complexes of different sizes and properties, rapid mixing, separation, and concentration of particles and complexes in liquid medium using SAW have been powerful manipulations used in various biomedical applications.

A lab-on-chip system features many advantages, such as a significant reduction of reagents and sample volume, short reaction and analysis time, high throughput, and portability. The fluorescent signal after the immunoassay implies a successful sandwiched immunocomplex. Our results showed that SAW can mix, separate, and concentrate two different sizes of PS particles. Thus, we can further infer that SAW can do the rapid diagnosis on bead-based sandwiched immunocomplex without washing. Using this SAW-based enhancement technic, we can rapidly concentrate PS particles within ~10 s, it strongly shortens the processing time of the analysis.