CYTOMECH: A MICROFLUIDIC SYSTEM FOR DETERMINATION OF PLATELET STIFFNESS

Abstract

This thesis comprises the Final Report document of Senior Design Team 22048: CytoMech. Platelet stiffness was found to be a viable indicator of likelihood of a thrombus forming in the bloodstream, especially after the introduction of implants like stents. The ability to test for platelet stiffness may prevent deadly embolisms and strokes. The team was tasked with completing and testing the design for a cheaper, more compact system for measuring the stiffness of platelets that matches the effectiveness of the gold standard method outlined in Dielectrophoresis-Mediated Electrodeformation (DEP) as a Means of Determining Individual Platelet Stiffness (Leung et al, 2016). The project has gone through two previous years of senior design team work, in which the teams were able to design and fabricate a custom fluorescence microscope, develop the basis for the code necessary to operate the device, and create first designs for microfluidic chips. Our team successfully created an entirely new electrical system to facilitate DEP and power LEDs for the microscope, rewrote the code to work with the new electronics and GUI, and fabricated working, more resilient microfluidic chips. We passed all of our system requirements, including arriving at a platelet stiffness value with only 0.04% error.