A smartphone-assisted microfluidic chemistry analyzer using image-based colorimetric assays for multi-index monitoring of diabetes and hyperlipidemia

• Published in: Analytica chimica acta 2019-04, Vol.1052, p.105-112
• Main Authors: Li, Jie, Sun, Yujia, Chen, Cheng, Sheng, Tao, Liu, Peng, Zhang, Guanbin
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Calibration; CCD cameras; Chambers; Chemistry; Cholesterol; Chronic illnesses; Color; Colorimetric detection; Colorimetry; Colorimetry - instrumentation; Cost analysis; Diabetes; Diabetes mellitus; Diabetes Mellitus - metabolism; Feasibility studies; Hydrogen peroxide; Hyperlipidemia; Hyperlipidemias - metabolism; Image detection; Lab-On-A-Chip Devices; Light emitting diodes; Light sources; Low cost; Microfluidics; Monitoring; Multi-index analysis; Organic chemistry; Peroxidase; Point-of-care testing; Smartphone; Smartphones
• ISSN: 0003-2670; 1873-4324
• DOI: 10.1016/j.aca.2018.11.025

A smartphone-assisted microfluidic chemistry analyzer using an image-based colorimetric detection method was successfully developed for the simultaneous analysis of three diabetes- and hyperlipidemia-related indexes, glucose (GLU), triglyceride (TG), and total cholesterol (TC). A fan-shaped microfluidic chip was designed and optimized to reliably allocate a premixed serum sample into four reaction chambers by a simple pipetting. The color changes of the peroxidase-H2O2 enzymatic reactions in the chambers were captured and analyzed using a smartphone-controlled analyzer with a LED light source and a CCD camera. The highly quantitative relationships between the analyte concentrations and the color characteristic values of the green channel of the captured images were successfully established, enabling accurate and reproducible detections of GLU, TG, and TC simultaneously at a low cost. The parallel analyses of 111 serum samples using our system and a conventional chemistry analyzer were conducted, yielding an excellent correlation and consistency between these two systems. This study proved the feasibility of performing the multi-index monitoring of diabetes, hyperlipidemia, and other chronic diseases on a point-of-care platform at a high fidelity, but a low cost. [Display omitted] •A smartphone-assisted microfluidic analyzer was developed for measuring diabetes- and hyperlipidemia-related indexes.•A fan-shaped microchip was designed to reliably allocate a sample into four reaction chambers with a simple pipetting.•An image-based colorimetric detection was established for analyzing glucose, triglyceride, and total cholesterol.•A large-scale comparative study proved the system had an excellent consistency with conventional chemistry analyzers.