Mobile phone based ELISA (MELISA)

Enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) is one of the most important technologies for biochemical analysis critical for diagnosis and monitoring of many diseases. Traditional systems for ELISA incubation and reading are expensive and bulky, thus cannot be used at point-of-care or in the field. Here, we propose and demonstrate a new miniature mobile phone based system for ELISA (MELISA). This system can be used to complete all steps of the assay, including incubation and reading. It weighs just 1 pound, can be fabricated at low cost, portable, and can transfer test results via mobile phone. We successfully demonstrated how MELISA can be calibrated for accurate measurements of progesterone and demonstrated successful measurements with the calibrated system.