Scientists at the McGill University in Canada have designed a method to quickly and easily detect the presence of malaria parasite in blood. The new technique should speed up detection compared to previous methods, and may become the new standard in malaria screening.
Current detection techniques require trained technicians to stain slides, look for the parasite’s DNA signature under the microscope, and then manually count all the visible infected cells, a labourious process dependent on the skill and availability of trained analysts. By contrast, the proposed new technique relies on a known optical effect called third harmonic generation (THG), which causes hemozoin – a crystalline substance secreted by the parasite – to glow blue when irradiated by an infrared laser.
“People who are familiar with music know about acoustic harmonics,” said Dr. Wiseman. “You have a fundamental sound frequency and then multiples of that frequency. Non-linear optical effects are similar: if you shine an intense laser beam of a specific frequency on certain types of materials, you generate multiples of the frequency. Hemozoin has a huge, non-linear optical response for the third harmonic, which causes the blue glow.”
McGill researchers report breakthrough in rapid malaria detection …
Abstract in Biophysical Journal…