UW Medical Center

Automated Touchless Laser Cutter for Dried Blood Spot Diagnostics

Dried blood spots (DBS) provide a convenient, patient-friendly matrix for the collection and storage of whole blood for diagnostic tests. However, excising the actual spots from the cards is a slow process and is prone to cross-contamination when contact methods such as "punching" are used. Until now, the ever-present risk of cross-contamination in contact-based processing has limited use of DBS in infectious disease testing. Touchless laser cutting of DBS eliminates this risk without compromising processing speed. Thus, this student team attempted to build a prototype user-friendly laser-cutting instrument for touchless DBS processing. This student sought to develop a small footprint lower-throughput device, (b) create plans for a larger, more automated device, and (c) generate engineering credibility and insight to successfully seek additional funding to bring the larger device to fruition.