Inertial Microfluidics Enabling Clinical Research.

Area of Science:

• Biomedical Engineering
• Microfluidics
• Analytical Chemistry

Background:

• Accurate analysis of complex samples is crucial for clinical and public health.
• Inertial microfluidics offers rapid, label-free isolation of bioparticles.
• This technique is valuable for downstream diagnostic assays.

Purpose of the Study:

• To review the role of inertial microfluidics in improving assay accuracy.
• To discuss applications in analyzing endogenous and exogenous targets from real-world samples.
• To highlight advancements and future directions in the field.

Main Methods:

• Leveraging inertial focusing: the balance of inertial and viscous forces on particles.
• Utilizing various microfluidic channel geometries (straight, curved, spiral, etc.) for particle manipulation.
• Focusing on size and/or deformability-based manipulation for target enrichment.

Main Results:

• Inertial microfluidics enables size-dependent laminar streamline alignment.
• Optimized channel designs facilitate particle purification, enrichment, and alignment.
• Demonstrated improvements in the accuracy of various diagnostic assays.

Conclusions:

• Inertial microfluidics significantly contributes to accurate, rapid, and label-free bioparticle analysis.
• The technology holds promise for diverse clinical applications and public health surveillance.
• Hybrid devices and evolving channel designs are expanding the capabilities of inertial microfluidics.