Scientists have developed a handheld device that enables a smartphone to perform lab- grade medical diagnostic tests which typically require large, expensive instruments.The USD 550 spectral transmission-reflectance-intensity (TRI) Analyzer attaches to a smartphone and analyses patient blood, urine, or saliva samples as reliably as clinic-based instruments that cost thousands of dollars. "Our TRI Analyzer is like the Swiss Army knife of biosensing," said professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in the US.
"It is capable of performing the three most common types of tests in medical diagnostics, so in practice, thousands of already-developed tests could be adapted to it," he said. Researchers used the TRI Analyzer to perform two commercially available assays - a test to detect a biomarker associated with pre-term birth in pregnant women and the phenylketonuria (PKU)…
