Needle and Potentiostat Study for Blood Glucose Monitoring: Third-Generation E-Mosquito
Date
2020-03-04
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Abstract
Diabetes Mellitus is a lifelong condition related to the inability of the pancreas to produce insulin, a hormone that regulates glucose levels in the body. Diabetes can also occur when the body resists the effects of the insulin. If diabetes is not treated properly or in time, the consequences can be severe and will put the patient’s life at risk. To control the glucose levels in their body, patients perform self-managed treatments. The objective of these treatments is to normalize the glucose levels by continuously monitoring the blood. Due to their high-accuracy in displaying real-time glucose concentration in the blood, finger pricking tests have become the most popular method to monitor the glucose levels. However, the finger prick method remains inconvenient for the patient. This is due to the technique, which demands the user to stab themself with a needle (inflicting pain) to access a blood sample. As a consequence, a significant number of patients drop their treatments. E-Mosquito is a new concept: a minimally-invasive glucose monitor meant to replace the finger pricking test. The second-generation E-Mosquito has proven to be an effective device to access a blood sample without inflicting pain to the user. Additionally, the E-Mosquito also has a glucometer that matches the accuracy of its commercial counterparts. Nevertheless, the E-Mosquito still requires some adjustments to acquire the correct amount of blood with a high success rate. The glucometer also requires improvement to avoid noise insertion in the circuit, that could influence the glucose readings. This thesis aims to optimize the E-Mosquito’s efficiency with two different studies. The first study focuses on selecting an appropriate needle to increase the success rate and the amount of blood acquired from the patient without inflicting pain. Furthermore, changes in the E-Mosquito design were performed to adjust the SMA actuator used in the blood acquisition. The second study is the addition of a new programmable electrochemical potentiostat. This addition reduces the number of components integrating the glucometer and maximize the accuracy of the glucose detection in the E-Mosquito when evaluating a blood sample. In the needle study, six out of eight tests extracted the required amount of blood, meaning that the success rate increased 25% for blood samples <10µL. The electrochemical potentiostat study shows that the new chip reduces the number of components inside the E-Mosquito, from three to just one, without affecting its accuracy. The glucometer exhibited a good linear correlation (R=0.9728). This complies with the standards set by the Food and Drug Administration. The two studies increase the feasibility of the E-Mosquito to replace the current glucose monitor devices.
Description
Keywords
E-Mosquito, BGM, Glucose, Diabetes
Citation
Teixeira de Carvalho Rojas, J. (2020). Needle and Potentiostat Study for Blood Glucose Monitoring: Third-Generation E-Mosquito (Master's thesis, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada). Retrieved from https://prism.ucalgary.ca.