Gao, DayongJin, Ye2025-10-022025-10-022025Jin_washington_0250E_28795.pdfhttps://hdl.handle.net/1773/54053Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Washington, 2025Hemostasis is a complex series of physiological reactions that occur when bleeding happens or a blood vessel is damaged. It functions to seal the injury site and stop bleeding. Hemostasis involves multiple interrelated steps, including platelet plug formation, coagulation, and fibrinolysis involving plenty of blood components, including platelets, coagulation factors, and erythrocytes (red blood cells). To date, no individual or model can fully explain all the reactions, mechanisms, and activities of the hemostatic process. Compared to the intricacies of hemostasis, effective hemostasis management is essential across a range of medical fields, including screening for cardiovascular diseases, monitoring anticoagulant therapy, blood transfusion management, preoperative hemostasis evaluation, Extracorporeal blood circuit therapy, screening for pre-existing coagulopathies. Therefore, a rapid, accurate and comprehensive hemostasis assessment is crucial for patient management and further hemostasis research. Currently, the most widely used routine hemostasis assays require separate tests for every hemostasis function. There are some novel global hemostasis assessments, including thromboelastography (TEG) and thromboelastometry (ROTEM). Limitations on recent assays, including partial or incomplete information on hemostasis function evaluation, high cost, time-consuming, labor-intensive, requiring professional medical personnel to conduct, analyze results. In this dissertation, an automated whole blood capacitance assessment using a carbon nanotube paper-composite(CPC) sensor is developed. Its automated module and integrated fluctuation analysis algorithms will also be presented.The automated whole-blood capacitance assessment system utilizes a carbon nanotube paper-composite (CPC) sensor for coagulation evaluation. Carbon nanotubes are emerging materials known for their high sensitivity, attributed to their excellent electrical conductivity and intricate surface structure, applied in many biosensors. In this study, carbon nanotube are used as the electrodes of a capacitance sensor to monitor changes in blood sample permittivity during the coagulation process the applied electric field. Importantly, the electrodes do not directly contact the blood samples. Compared to TEG, ROTEM, and other global or dielectric-based coagulation sensors, this system is low-cost, reusable, and portable. From the capacitance signal, multiple parameters can be analyzed and correlated with various hemostatic components, including coagulation function (factors), platelets, and erythrocytes(RBCs). The results also demonstrated strong agreement with the thromboelastography assay. Further investigations into the potential functions and advantages of this system are also presented in this dissertation. The most commonly used routine hemostasis assays are typically limited to hospitals or clinical laboratories. These limitations arises primarily from two factors. First, the devices used in conventional hemostasis assays are non-portable and the testing process is complex. Routine tests require individual assays for each hemostatic parameter, with each test depending on specialized equipment. Also, these assays require trained medical personnel to perform the procedures and interpret the results, which often provide only partial information that must be analyzed by a medical professional. These two factors make the portability of conventional hemostasis assays nearly unfeasible. The development of this automated whole blood capacitance-based hemostasis evaluation system aims to address this issue by enabling portable hemostasis assessment. Automatic module can complete the entire process from blood sample aspiration to post-test disposal without manual intervention. Automatic assessment will reduce the requirements for medical personnel and helps standardize the testing protocol. The system's ability to perform multi-parameter and automated assessments makes hemostasis evaluation applicable in portable, cost-effective, and potentially home-use scenarios. Furthermore, this dissertation presents a novel fluctuation analysis of the capacitance signal. Fluctuation signal can avoid the influence of some noise on the capacitance baseline. Future improvements to the system will focus on further fluctuation analysis and more coagulation parameters correlations. A more compressed and industrially designed automatic module is also in the plan for the portable and automated objective.application/pdfen-USCC BY-NC-NDAutomatic assay systemCarbon nanotube sensorHemostasis assessmentHemostasis sensorMechanical engineeringBiomedical engineeringMechanical engineeringThesis