Malaria diagnosis using magnetic nanoparticles

The current gold standard method of Malaria diagnosis relies on the blood smears examination. The method is labor-intensive, time consuming and requires the expertise for data interpretation. In contrast, Raman scattering from a metabolic byproduct of the malaria parasite (Hemozoin) shows the possibility of rapid and objective diagnosis of malaria. However, hemozoin concentration is usually extremely low especially at the early stage of malaria infection, rendering weak Raman signal. In this work, we propose the sensitive detection of enriched β-hematin, whose spectroscopic properties are equivalent to hemozoin, based on surface enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) by using magnetic nanoparticles. A few orders of magnitude enhancement in the Raman signal of β-hematin can be achieved using magnetic nanoparticles. Our result demonstrates the potential of SERS using magnetic nanoparticles in the effective detection of hemozoin for malaria diagnosis.