Handheld bio-optical sensor helps detect infectious disease

Anitoa Systems, a Palo Alto, Cailifornia (US) startup established in 2011, partnering with Zhejiang University of China, has successfully demonstrated a handheld real time quantitative-polymerase-chain-reaction system (qPCR) using Anitoa’s ultra-low-light CMOS bio-optical sensor. Anitoa’s handheld qPCR is shown to be capable of detecting several types of pathogen DNA and RNA’s, including hepatitis B, C, and E. Coli. This qPCR system has achieved detection limit of 4 copies per sample and over 9 orders of magnitude dynamic range. A key component of this handheld qPCR is the CMOS bio-optical sensor chip produced by Anitoa. It formed a single-chip fluorescent imaging system, tightly integrated with a miniature thermal cycler, to perform real time imaging of multiple PCR reaction sites simultaneously without the need for a scanning mechanism commonly used by qPCR systems today. Released in September 2014, Anitoa reports that its ultra-low light CMOS bio-optical sensor is the first commercially available CMOS imager sensor...