The Viability of a Non-Flow Capacitive Biosensing Microsystem for Whole Cell Counting

Abstract

An analysis on the viability of implementing non-flow based capacitive biosensing for bulk counting of whole cancer cells is presented. A mathematical model is implemented based on established research to test the validity of the hypothesis that cells are considered to act like parallel electric connections. A finite element analysis model is also presented to investigate the effect of electrode geometry and cell position on the measured capacitance. The electrical interaction between cells is found not to be strictly parallel and in fact dependent on a host of uncontrollable parameters. Bulk sensing of multiple cells is found to be impractical for a single electrode setup due to the unpredictability of cell location and cell interactions. An array-based implementation is proposed, which allows for the use of current models and data of single-cell analyses to be used.