Australian Scientists at Monash University have developed a new technique for rapidly and proficiently separating blood plasma at the microscopic level without any moving parts thereby enabling the doctors to do blood tests without the need of sending samples to the lab.
The new process is based on a phenomenon that was elucidated by Einstein in the 1920s according to which the tea leaves accumulate at the centre of bottom in a stirred cup. Many general medical tests require separation of blood plasma from red blood cells, proteins and other microscopic particles. At the moment, doctors the samples and send them to lab for further analyzing that takes a number of days. With the help of this new technique, this problem of sending the samples to the lab will be sorted out.
In this process, a little amount of blood enters a fluid chamber, and a needle tip is placed close to the surface of the blood at an angle. After that, voltage is sent through the needle that makes the oppositely charged ions to come together thereby creating an air flow called ‘ionic wind’. This ionic wind makes the blood to circulate and the microscopic particles in the blood go in a downward spiral. Then comes the “tea leaf paradox‘ phenomenon into action when the microscopic particles are pulled to the inner side near the bottom of the chamber. So we can say tha the tiny chamber of blood is a cylinder of liquid just like a tea cup where the bass remains stationary.
Well, this technology could be integrated into tiny chips about the size of a credit card but will take five to ten years from now to commercialize them.
Image: mjhunt
Via: physorg
