iGem_BIT

Hardware Part

Background

A ctually，to know the health condition of our bodies, physical examination is the most effective method, which has significance of both disease prediction and disease treatment. With the development of society and economy, people start to pay more attention to the health problems. The term "physical examination" has already been well known to us. Regular physical examination has already become a routine for some people. Some institutions and companies also provide employees with regular physical examinations . People can take measures to treat diseases according to the results of physical examination.

But for now, the vast majority of people pay little attention to the physical examination. Statistically, only about 300 million people go through a physical examination once a year, but the vast majority of people do less than once.The cost of normal medical examination is about 700 RMB, or about $100 (China's per capita income is $7476 in 2014). Getting the inspection report from the physical examination requires 3 working days on average, and the average number of the projects of physical examination is 10. However, in some cases, others may take others’ individual physical examination results by accident, thus causing unnecessary misunderstanding. In addition, according to some news reports, it costs a lot because some hospitals charge a lot in the physical examination. What is more, by the sales of people’s information, people's private information was leaked, and the rights and interests were infringed. According to the above, it reflects the shortcomings of the current hospital physical examinations, which are that it wastes money, wastes time and wastes energy.

On the contrary, if there exists a detection instrument, the individual can examine the health condition of the body at any time in a fast, time-saving, trustworthy way, and people's living habits will surely change a lot. According to the results of the display of the instrument, if the body is sick, people can go to the hospital for the treatment in time. This instrument also has many other advantages: save money, detection instruments can be used repeatedly so that the cost of physical examination is significantly reduced, and personal information can be better kept; save time, you don’t have to wait for the 3 working days to get medical results, and as soon as possible to know the results, you save your time; save energy, people don’t need to be in the line many times to finish their physical examination, effectively saving the energy of people. According to a survey, the Chinese physical examination market every year is between 80 billion RMB and 120 billion RMB. And this kind of home-style detection instrument has the advantages that will soon attract people’s attention once it is invented. This shows that the potential of this type of instrument will be infinite once put into production. It will better suit the needs that people think physical examination should have in the future. It is predicted that in the future, lots of researchers’ attention will be put on such products in the field of biological devices.

Design

The principle of the culturing device

The design of culturing device is mainly based on the shaking table at the constant temperature, in which organism can be rapidly cultured and express its product. It composes of three major modules: temperature-controlling part, rapping part and operation part. Flexible heater with electric fan makes the temperature controlling module works. And its function is to control the culturing temperature at about 37℃, which is the optimum temperature for bacteria to grow. As for the rapping part, it consists of EP tube, linear actuator, bearing plate and springs. And its function is to make the bacteria fully contacted with culture substrates and increase the dissolved oxygen, so that the growth rate of bacteria could increase. The operation module includes SCM, LED display and operating panel and it can make it happen that the users can regulate the culturing temperature and time by operating the panel and the process and result can simply shown in LED display.

The principle of the detecting device

The design of detecting device is based on the micro plate reader, and can detect the light intensity of fluorescent protein, thereby the concentration of macro-organism is indirectly calculable. Detecting device includes an excitation light source, a light guide path detection board, the green band pass filters, sensors, microcontrollers and instruction screens. The operation principle of detecting device is that an excitation light source with blue LED light (or blue laser pointer, or a blue laser diode), a wavelength of 450nm blue light emitted by the light guide path (optical fiber or multi-row module) stimulate carried on detection board green fluorescent protein, so that the green fluorescent protein emit green fluorescence wavelength of 520nm through filters, accepted by the OPT101 sensor and converted to a voltage signal, the voltage signal from the microcontroller acquisition, and the final results presented on display screen.

Culturing Device

Materials:

Eppendorf Tube (Volume: 5ml), Fan, Heating Film, Linear Actuator, LED Display, Tube Loading Board, Operating Panel and Signal Chip Microcomputer (Type: MSP430).

Result:
From the chart, we can see the blue line is the standard curve, which is made by thermostatic shaker, and the red point is the detect value, which is made by our hardware, culturing device. It is obviously shown that the growth curve of bacteria is the same as standard roughly. However, due to some certain drawbacks of prototype, like short of insulation effect, the curve descends at latter stages. We still need to improve the property of device to cope with the problem.

Detecting Device

Materials:
Laser Pointer (Color: Blue, Emission Wavelength: 450nm, Consumption: 0.8W), Triangular Prism, Fading Lens (Fading Efficiency: 25%), Detecting Chip, Optical Filter (Filtrating Wavelength: 450nm, Band-pass: 20), Photo-sensor (Type: OPT101), Signal Chip Microcomputer (Type: MSP430), and LED Display.

Result: From the chart, we can see the blue line is the standard curve, which is made by enzyme-labeled instrument, and the red point is the detect value, which is made by our hardware, detecting device. The detect value has a significant linear positive correlation with the standard curve. The fitting degree is 0.9651, which also indicates positive correlation between the detect value and standard curve.

Discussion

To the product:

The product is aiming at creating more opportunities for medical detecting industry, improving the accuracy of disease prediction and leading a brand new crowd-creating medical industry.

A）To customers

We manufacture and produce portable, household, low-price detecting devices, the core technology of which is integrated in disposable biochips.

B）To manufacturer

We cooperate with hospitals and medical enterprises to develop large-scale detecting devices. Furthermore, we want to collect health data in cooperation with companies and provide more sophisticated disease detecting function.

C） To developers

The technology can be partly open-source, which enables more developers to improve their researches.

Hardware Lab Note

May

1. Design the outline and structure of Detecting Device 1.0

June

1. Construct Detecting Device 1.0 and take part in China-US Maker Competition Beijing Division
2. Improve Detecting Device 1.0 and upgrade it to Detecting Device 1.1
3. Construct Detecting Device 1.1 and take part in China-US Maker Competition Beijing Division

July

1. Design the outline and structure of Culturing Device 1.0
2. Design the outline and structure of Detecting Device 2.0

August

1. Construct Culturing Device 1.0
2. Construct Detecting Device 2.0

September

1. Debug and improve Culturing Device 1.0
2. Debug and improve Detecting Device 2.0

Team:BIT/Hardware