Personal Bio-Aerosol Sensor

Fieldable technologies that detect toxic biological particles in the air will provide the ability to warn and treat for exposure to harmful aerosolized agents. Current national military strategy specifies a worldwide force protection capability thatrequires detection, identification, and vaccination in order to protect U.S. forces against potential biowarfare threats. InnovaTek will develop a wearable bio-sensor that will sound a warning to the user within 10 minutes when approximately 10 CFU's ofbiological material is present per liter of air. The sample will be preserved for further analysis if biological material is detected.InnovaTek's novel approach integrates several proprietary components to collect, concentrate, process, and detect biological material in the air. These include: 1) a pre-separator that removes large particles from the incoming air-stream, 2) a cyclonecollector that concentrates 1-10 mm particles into a small volume of liquid buffer, 3) a micro-fluidics platform for sample processing, 4) reagents for biological detection, and 5) a sensor to convert the chemical signal to an electronic warning signal.The system will produce only 42 db sound, weigh about 3 pounds, and use <0.35 amps of power, which makes it feasible as a battery-powered, wearable device. The development of a personal bio-aerosol sensor will allow monitoring and evaluation of threats from microorganisms in the air as a result of natural phenomena or human-induced activities such as terrorism. In addition to its military and homelanddefense applications the proposed device is expected to be of great interest for a variety of global scale markets, including first responder markets and emerging commercial markets such as public health, food production, agricultural, andpharmaceutical/medical applications.