Photo-Thermal Induced Optical Scattering Modulation Sensor for Malaria Diagnosis

Malaria is one of the leading killer diseases in sub-Saharan Africa. Although the disease is curable, early and accurate diagnosis is key to effective therapy. Existing malaria diagnostic techniques have low detection accuracy especially when the parasite load in the blood is low. In this paper, we report on a simple photo-thermal based technique for detection of the Plasmodium parasites’ biomarker (hemozoin) in blood smear samples. The technique has demonstrated 100% Plasmodium detection sensitivity and specificity from the ten blood smear test samples used.