A Development of Contraction-Expansion Microfluidic Device for Detecting Microfilaria in Blood

Abstract

The objective of this research is to detect the microfilariae in blood by using filtration microfluidic chip. From the preliminary experiment, the main problem is the concentration of red blood cells. These red blood cells clogged and blocked the microfilariae from the observation. In this part of the research, contraction and expansion array was chosen to solve the stated problem. The channel in the chip is 60 μm. The width of contraction and expansion channel is 50 μm. For the length of expansion chambers, there are 500 and 1,000 μm. In each chip, the expansions were connected in series. The experiments were done to determine the efficiency by using polystyrene beads with 4 sizes; 5, 10, 15, and 20 μm. The Reynolds number of 40, 60, 80, 100, and 120 were selected for the experiments. Afterward, the whole blood of the dog together with normal saline solution was injected to determine the separation efficiency of the microfilaria of the chip. The chip could separate 100% of microfilariae to the main outlet.