Diagnose Diseases Instantly With Whispering Gallery Mode Biosensor
Researchers at New York University’s Polytechnic Institute, led by Professor Stephen Arnold, have developed a new technology, helping to detect viruses. Unlike traditional methods, that have required weeks for their identification, the Whispering Gallery-Mode Biosensor is much cheaper and does the same in a few minutes. It is sensitive enough to identify viruses the size of MS2 ( the smallest known RNA virus particle). The Biosensor has been named after the unique Whispering Gallery that features unusual acoustics, located in St. Paulâs Cathedral, London. Making use of the same physical principles, the Whispering Gallery-Mode Biosensor uses light instead of sound to identify possible viruses. The sensor comes with a glass microsphere at its heart, a fiber optic cable leads a tunable laser into the sphere and the light bounces off the curves of the sphere just like sound bounces off the curved wall in the Whispering Gallery covering every point within the microsphere. In the presence of virus particles the resonant properties of the sphere change and affect the laser.
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