title: General purpose, field-portable cell-based biosensor platform.
abstract: There are several groups of researchers developing cell-based biosensors for chemical and biological warfare agents based on electrophysiologic monitoring of cells. In order to transition such sensors from the laboratory to the field, a general-purpose hardware and software platform is required. This paper describes the design, implementation, and field-testing of such a system, consisting of cell-transport and data acquisition instruments. The cell-transport module is a self-contained, battery-powered instrument that allows various types of cell-based modules to be maintained at a preset temperature and ambient CO(2) level while in transit or in the field. The data acquisition module provides 32 channels of action potential amplification, filtering, and real-time data streaming to a laptop computer. At present, detailed analysis of the data acquired is carried out off-line, but sufficient computing power is available in the data acquisition module to enable the most useful algorithms to eventually be run real-time in the field. Both modules have sufficient internal power to permit realistic field-testing, such as the example presented in this paper.
authors.affiliation: Department of Electrical Engineering, CIS-202X, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305-4075, USA.
authors.forename: K H
authors.initials: KH
authors.lastname: Gilchrist
authors.forename: V N
authors.initials: VN
authors.lastname: Barker
authors.forename: L E
authors.initials: LE
authors.lastname: Fletcher
authors.forename: B D
authors.initials: BD
authors.lastname: DeBusschere
authors.forename: P
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Ghanouni
authors.forename: L
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Giovangrandi
authors.forename: G T
authors.initials: GT
authors.lastname: Kovacs
mesh_terms: D000200:Action Potentials; D000465:Algorithms; D000818:Animals; D015374:Biosensing Techniques / Q000295:instrumentation* / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D002460:Cell Line; D004867:Equipment Design; D051379:Mice; D009206:Myocardium / Q000166:cytology / Q000378:metabolism; D012984:Software