Bio-Devices

We develop an optofluidic nano-cytometer for viruses by optically manipulating and characterizing single nano-sized bioparticles to facilitate their purification, sorting and quantification. The innovation can enhance our understanding of the study of viruses and address some of the most challenging technological bottlenecks in viral

research and disease diagnosis today. The program team of scientists, engineers and virologists build upon cutting-edge advances in optofluidics and biophotonics to produce revolutionary toolkits for countering pandemic threats and infections. The goals of the research program are articulated within the following three major complementary tasks.

Task 1 Design and fabricate an optofluidic ultra-filter and chemical coating for nanoparticle and virus manipulation.

Task 2 Design and develop a high-sensitivity imaging and signal processing system for nanoparticle and virus quantification.

Task 3 Develop an integrated optofluidic nano-cytometer in an Automated Live Virus

Investigation System (ALVIS) for viral characterization and demonstrate its application using body fluid.

The innovation can be extended to study other nano-sized particles and hence has a wide range of applications in water, food, environment and defense industries for markets of pandemic control, biosecurity, portable medical devices, water and environmental monitoring systems.

Bio-Imaging

Micro-Optical Coherence Tomography (Micro-OCT) is an new techniques that provides subcellular resolution, three dimensional images of human tissues noninvasively.

Current clinical imaging tools including ultrasound, X-ray, CT and MRI have fundamentally changed medicine but the spatial resolution is not enough to visualize the critical subcellular and extracellular information needed for accurate diagnosis of important diseases like epithelial cancers, cardiovascular disease, skin disease and eye diseases.

The spatial resolution of Micro-OCT is 100 times higher than the current standard-of-care tools, with which subcellular and extracellular details are readily imaging in real-time without damaging the tissue or any ionizing risks. We have demonstrated that Micro-OCT is capable of detecting precancerous lesions in skin and digestive tracts through clinical trials which are difficult with the current tools. The accuracy can be up to 95%.