Development of front-end pre-analytical modules for integrated blood plasma separation

Blood plasma separation is a fundamental step in numerous biomedical assays involving low abundance plasma-borne biomarkers. The interest in microscale blood plasma separation solutions has emerged with the development of microfluidic technologies in the early 2000s and has continued in recent years as few solutions have so far achieved both high yield and high purity without sample dilution, in volumes compatible with current clinical assays. Hydrodynamic or acoustic blood plasma separation microdevices have attracted considerable attention from the microfluidic community in the continuous separation of blood samples with a volume of a few mL due to their high throughput and insensitivity to clogging. However, obtaining a high yield from whole blood is challenging because the volume of red blood cells or hematocrit typically rises above physiological levels after each separation region, following plasma extraction. Some key parameters that influence the microfluidic blood plasma separation efficiency and yield of such devices have been investigated in this project. In particular, this project sought to establish experimentally, for the first time, the maximum hematocrit level and flow rate achievable in a microchannel, without hemolysis. Furthermore, the influence of flow fluctuation in syringe pumps, which are commonly employed in microfluidic setups, on the separation performance of blood plasma separation devices was investigated. These studies not only reveal the reasons behind the slow progress in the development of high-throughput microfluidic blood plasma separation devices capable of handling whole blood samples but also provides a framework for the design optimisation of future microfluidic blood plasma separation devices. While for low to mid-volume clinical sample volume (<4 mL), microscale solutions are viable, for high clinical sample volume (>4 mL) blood plasma separation traditional centrifugation approach remains the gold standard but is currently cost-prohibitive. In the third part of this thesis, a low-cost and open-source centrifugation setup for clinical blood sample volume has been developed. This centrifugation system capable of processing clinical blood tubes could be valuable to mobile laboratories or low-resource settings where centrifugation is required immediately after blood withdrawal for further testing

Internet of Things (IoT)-based Smart Irrigation System for Sustainable Agriculture

The Internet of Things (IoT) is a collection of interconnected devices with self-configuring capabilities. Each aspect of the average person's daily life has been changed by the Internet of Things (IoT), which has made everything smart and intelligent. This paper proposes an Internet of Things (IoT)-based smart irrigation system for monitoring and managing field’s environment in real-time using cloud computing and various sensors connected with microcontroller. The system aims to reduce the time and energy of farmers by automating the process of monitoring field conditions and show the real-time measurement on mobile application and web application. The collected data is stored in the cloud and processed to facilitate automation through IoT devices. The results of the experimentation include temperature (DHT-11), humidity (DHT-11), soil moisture, water pump, fertilizer management (pH meter), and raindrop monitor. The system performs decision-making analysis with the interaction of the farmer and has the potential to increase crop productivity and reduce wastage of resources in agriculture sector

A low-cost, open-source centrifuge adaptor for separating large volume clinical blood samples

Blood plasma separation is a prerequisite in numerous biomedical assays involving low abundance plasma-borne biomarkers and thus is the fundamental step before many bioanalytical steps. High-capacity refrigerated centrifuges, which have the advantage of handling large volumes of blood samples, are widely utilized, but they are bulky, non-transportable, and prohibitively expensive for low-resource settings, with prices starting at $1,500. On the other hand, there are low-cost commercial and open-source micro-centrifuges available, but they are incapable of handling typical clinical amounts of blood samples (2-10mL). There is currently no low-cost CE marked centrifuge that can process large volumes of clinical blood samples on the market. As a solution, we customised the rotor of a commercially available low-cost micro-centrifuge (~$125) using 3D printing to enable centrifugation of large clinical blood samples in resource poor-settings. Our custom adaptor ($15) can hold two 9 mL S-Monovette tubes and achieve the same separation performance (yield, cell count, hemolysis, albumin levels) as the control benchtop refrigerated centrifuge, and even outperformed the control in platelet separation by at least four times. This low-cost open-source centrifugation system capable of processing clinical blood tubes could be valuable to low-resource settings where centrifugation is required immediately after blood withdrawal for further testing