Sensing system for cystic fibrosis: Modeling the detection and characterization of sweat

Abstract

Sweat assumes an important duty for the diagnostic of diverse pathologies since it is mostly a synthesis of human being physiological functions and its content is a dedicated indicator. It is an indicator of vegetative innervation, and disturbances of nervous systems. Sodium chloride, for instance, is one of the indicators of cystic fibrosis. The paper illustrates the modeling of a sensing system and its related architectures to detect the sodium chloride for the diagnosis of cystic fibrosis. The system is partly in micro and nanotechnology. The paper presents first a dedicated hardware for conditioning and processing signal deriving from a sensor for sweat characterization. The experimental board has been realized using common components but it can be reduced to micro and nanotechnology configuration. This realization, even carried out with a traditional board, demonstrates two positive results: nonlinearity of sodium concentration and reaction time. However, noise contributes to lower the experimental uncertainty. To improve the features, especially in terms of lowering uncertainty and further reaction time (response time), a design of a dedicated sensor for detecting sweat is performed. It is an ISFET (ion-sensitive field effect transistor) using MEMS technology.