3-D Heterogeneous SoC for detecting and filtering infected biological cells

This paper discusses a 3-D heterogeneous system on a chip (3-D HSoC) for an important biomedical application. Specifically, it discusses the application for detecting and filtering infected cells in blood. For example, leukemia and HIV produce diseased cells that circulate in the blood stream and are characterized by certain surface proteins. If the sensor plane of the 3-D HSoC is coated with an array of a specific receptor or ligand that binds to the protein on the virus, then the diseased cells can be captured, identified and dealt with accordingly. The analog and digital planes of the HSoC can enable this identification capability as discussed in the paper. Simulations show that the attached diseased cells can be correctly detected with a probability ranging from 0.98 to 0.996. We present the architecture and methodology for the detection of diseased cells using an scFv array on the sensor plane, efficient circuits on the analog plane, and the J-platform on the digital plane.