The Application of Biomedical Engineering Techniques to the Diagnosis and Management of Tropical Diseases: A Review <s> Dielectrophoresis (DEP) <s> The motion of suspensoid particles relative to that of the solvent resulting from polarization forces produced by an inhomogeneous electric field is defined as ``dielectrophoresis.'' It is analogous to the related phenomenon of electrophoresis, in which motion of suspensoid particles is produced by the action of an electrostatic field on the charged particles.From a consideration of theoretical calculations and from experimental observations it is concluded that the phenomena of ``dielectrophoresis'' and ``dielectro‐precipitation'' can be observed under rather ideal conditions, though it is ordinarily often difficult to do so because of the presence of the more easily produced electrophoresis or ion‐type migration of charged particles.The usefulness of dielectrophoresis (and/or electrophoresis) for removing suspended solid particles from polymer solutions during analysis is described. <s> BIB001 </s> The Application of Biomedical Engineering Techniques to the Diagnosis and Management of Tropical Diseases: A Review <s> Dielectrophoresis (DEP) <s> An important enabling factor for realising integrated micro fluidic analysis instruments for medical diagnostics purposes is front-end sample preparation. Dielectrophoresis is a method that offers great potential for cell discrimination and isolation for sample processing, and here we have applied it to the problem of isolating malaria-infected cells from blood. During development of the malarial pathogen, Plasmodium falciparum, increases occur in the ionic permeability of the plasma membrane of infected erythrocytes. When challenged by suspension in a low conductivity medium, infected cells lose internal ions while uninfected cells retain them. The resultant dielectric differences between infected and uninfected cells were exploited by dielectrophoretic manipulation in spatially inhomogeneous, travelling electrical fields produced by two types of microelectrode arrays. Parasitised cells of ring form or later stage from cultures and clinical specimens were isolated ::: by steric dielectric field-flow-fractionation, focused at the centre of a spiral electrode array, and identified and counted. The dielectrophoretic methods require only a few micro litres of blood, and should be applicable to the production of small, low-cost automated devices for assessing parasite concentrations with potential applicability to drug sensitivity studies and the diagnosis of malaria. By simple adjustment of the electrical field parameters, other cell subpopulations that characterise disease, such as residual cancer cells in blood, can be similarly isolated and analysed. <s> BIB002
Dielectrophoresis (DEP) technology is utilized by many researchers for cell manipulating and characterization BIB001 . DEP is the phenomenon that describes the motion of polarizable particles in a non-uniform electric field. It allows for the recognition of differentiated populations of particles based on their relative polarisibility. Separation between the living and dead cells is an example of application of DEP; taking advantage of the unique electrical properties of each bioparticle  . Aceti et al.  found that the dielectric properties of erythrocytes infected with the malarial parasite P. falciparum are different from normal erythrocytes. The electrical conductivity of the erythrocyte membrane increases sharply when it is infected with Malaria parasites. This sharp increase was due to changes in the composition, morphology and permeability of the erythrocyte membrane. Therefore, Gascoyne et al. BIB002 utilized the DEP technique to separate the malarial infected cells from the healthy cells by dielectrophoretic manipulation in a non-uniform electric field. Only a few microliters of blood are required to detect malaria on the DEP platform.