Small vibrating sensors help spot early signs of disease and infection

The plate-style microelectromechanical resonators reportedly allow for sensitive, inexpensive detection of biomarkers using just a drop or two of blood.

“The goal here is to find the disease so early that you can treat it without invasive surgery,” said Jeffrey Rhoads, a professor in Purdue’s School of Mechanical Engineering. “The test looks for a particular protein related to a disease, so you could use this for the detection of many different diseases.”

The sensors use a piezoelectrically actuated resonant microsystem, which when driven by electricity can sense a change in mass. The sensitivity of the resonator increases as the resonant frequency increases, making high-frequency resonators excellent candidates for biomarker detection, Rhoads said. The method also is much faster and less expensive than other types of medical tests.

A paper describing the work has been published in IEEE Sensors Letters.

Rhoads said they discovered a way to conduct the test that identifies a minute amount of protein in a very small amount of blood.