A protein detection POCT device based on microfluidic immunoassay chips

Immunoassay is one of the most important protein detection methods, which is widely used in clinical diagnosis, environment monitor and biological research due to its high specificity and sensitivity. Most of the existing protein immunoassay detection devices have the weakness of high expenses, large scale and low sample processing rate. Microfluidic immunoassay chips have been widely recognized as a powerful technology that will play a vital role in future protein detection to meet low reagent, short reaction time and power consumption. In this paper, a protein detection point of care testing (POCT) device was presented aiming at the needs of detection with high-throughput, small size and site analysis. And a LED-induced scanning confocal fluorescence detection system was adopted in the device to achieve high sensitivity detection and small size. To facilitate system integration and data processing, a MSP430 microcontroller was used as the core chip. And a graphical user interface (GUI) software was provided to control the data acquiring, storing, processing and image display. Ultimately, a fluorescence image was acquired at a concentration of 1×10-8mol/L fluorescein isothiocyanate (FITC) solution by the device.