Cell Phone Microscopy Enabled Low-cost Manufacturable Colorimetric Urine Glucose Test

Glucose is a crucial biomarker for monitoring and diagnosing various diseases, such as hypoglycemia, hyperglycemia, and diabetes, which can cause severe symptoms in human beings. Therefore, there is a growing demand for fast, affordable, and easy-to-use diagnostic tools. In this paper, we present a novel glucose sensor that accurately measures glucose concentration in urine, meeting the ASSURED criteria (Affordable, Sensitive, Specific, User-friendly, Rapid, and Equipment-free). The glucose sensor we developed is based on microfluidic devices made from disposable and medical-grade tapes, as well as glucose urine analysis strips on a microscope glass slide. The microfluidic channels were fabricated using laser cutting instead of traditional cleanroom methods, which makes this glucose sensor rapid, economical, and equipment-free to produce. After absorbing the target solution, the disposable device is placed in a 3D-printed box and the phone camera is used to capture images of the analysis strips for further colorimetric processing. Our paper demonstrates the capability of the glucose sensor to quantify glucose in sucrose water using an exponential regression model that specifies the relationship between glucose concentrations and average RGB values.