The spread of any infection via bacteria, virus etc. can prove to be disastrous. As for today , the spread of corona virus is the best example of it. In such condition, it gets important to test the people whether they are infected or not. The methods used for testing today are not quite efficient and take a huge amount of time. Sometimes, the condition of people gets worst by the time their test reports arrive. Moreover, the testing methods used currently are labour intensive and require much amount of focus and concentration for proper results. Therefore, there arises the probability for the false test reports as well. So, there arises the need of a more better testing alternative.
At present time, the whole world is under the effect of deadly pandemic COVID19. There is large population of people who have been infected and large number of people have died also. The 1st step towards the treatment of this disease is obviously the testing of it i.e. to be able to identify the infected person. The most common test used today for checking corona virus infectants is called PCR test (polymerized chain reaction test). This test is actually based upon the genetic information of virus (RNA). Although this test is quite reliable but the problem is that it is labour intensive with several stages at which human errors may occur between sampling and analysis. As per reports , the percentage of occurrence of false negatives so far is around 30%. Besides, the testing kits are also not so easily available at all places. The duration of the reports using this method can vary from 20minutes to few hours or even more. Now, we are presenting the idea of a test based simply on a microscope and which do not requires much human involvement. The name of the microscope is VDM(virus detection microscope). This is basically the modification of a microscope named Transmission electron microscope which intern is a very sensitive microscope, able to resolve the images of objects up to the size of 0.2 nanometres. We have to attach a CMOS image sensor (rather a particular kind of it named Pixi -2) which can be used to detect or identify the microscopic images. The size of corona virus as per current information ranges from 50 to 150 nm. This means it can certainly be viewed with the help of transmission electron microscope. Now, the idea is that the Pixi -2 image sensor is to be connected with Arduino and with proper programming, we can feed in it the images of corona virus. Then, it is to be attached with the eye piece of our microscope such that analysing any sample of blood or saliva (etc.) using transmission electron microscope which contains the traces of corona virus, the image sensor connected with eye piece of microscope and Arduino (and some kind of alarm or light signals) would be able to identify the images of virus and accordingly it will provide the signals also. Moreover, it can also find the number density of virus in that particular sample thereby giving the information about the level of spread of infection in that person (of whomever the sample is). This way , we can use VDM to detect the virus within seconds. Not only for this particular corona virus but VDM can be used to detect any infectious disease caused by spread of virus, bacteria or other microorganisms depending upon the command to the sensor via programming through Arduino . There is not much of human involvement, so chances of occurrence of errors is quite low. Moreover, the devices used are also available easily. The average cost predicted for VDM is around Rs.18000. So, this can turn out to be the efficient and easy way for testing of any sample.
Link: Transmission electron microscope used to detect the infectants (or virus) which has a resolution for the size of up to 0.2 manometers. Pixi-2 camera to sense the image of a particular virus. Can detect any virus or bacteria or any other micro- infectants in a very short time without too much of human involvement.
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