Building and characterizing a fluorescence setup to measure very low concentrations of analytes/biomarkers

This training report is the result of my internship in the B-Phot Brussels Photonics team of the VUB<br> that took place between February 3 and April 3, 2020. The project of this internship nds its context<br> in the European SensApp project which regroups several European research institutes and universities,<br> including the VUB. The goal of this project is to develop a method to diagnose the Alzheimer's disease<br> in a faster and non-invasive manner, simply through a blood test, which is currently not possible because<br> the concentration of biomarkers of the Alzheimer's disease in the blood is too low. During this internship,<br> I was lead to build, align and calibrate a uorescence detection setup. Using this setup, I made mea-<br> surements of the uorescence intensity of low concentrations of dye solutions. From those measurements,<br> I performed calculations of the signal to noise ratio in order to determine the limit of detection of the<br> setup. Finally, I studied the kinetics of photobleaching in order to get to a better understanding of its<br> impact on the measurements.本培训报告为本人于2020年2月3日至4月3日在布鲁塞尔自由大学（Vrije Universiteit Brussel, VUB）B-Phot布鲁塞尔光子学团队完成实习的成果。 本次实习项目的研究依托欧洲SensApp项目展开，该项目汇聚了包括布鲁塞尔自由大学在内的多家欧洲科研机构与高校。 本项目旨在研发一种更快速、无创的阿尔茨海默病（Alzheimer's disease）诊断方法，仅需通过血液检测即可实现——而当前受限于血液中阿尔茨海默病生物标志物浓度过低，该方案暂未可行。 实习期间，本人负责搭建、光路对准并校准一套荧光（fluorescence）检测装置。利用该装置，我针对低浓度染料溶液的荧光强度开展了测量。 基于上述测量数据，我通过信噪比（signal to noise ratio）计算确定了该装置的检测限。最后，我对光漂白（photobleaching）动力学展开研究，以进一步明晰其对测量结果的影响。