Alzheimer’s disease is a progressive neurodegenerative condition marked by a decline in brain function, particularly affecting memory, reasoning, and cognitive skills.
Current diagnostic tools for Alzheimer’s have limitations, such as being invasive, costly, and unsuitable for mass screening.
To address this, five UGM students have researched and developed the potential of lipid membranes in an electronic tongue (e-Tongue) as an alternative for effective Alzheimer’s diagnosis.
The students are part of the UGM Student Creativity Program in Exact Science Research (PKM-RE). The team includes Muhammad Rofii Ashari (Physics 2022), Zuleika Arum (Physics 2022), Putri Ardiana Dwi Rahmawati (Chemistry 2022), Aulia Agustin (Physics 2023), and Jonathan Hamonangan Sihaloho (Medicine 2023).
Dr. Ahmad Kusumaatmaja, a researcher for an electronic tongue for early Alzheimer’s diagnosis, supervises them.
Muhammad Rofii Ashari explained that their innovation, the electronic tongue, uses electronic sensors to detect and differentiate various tastes and chemical components in a sample.
“By combining sensitive sensors with machine learning technology, this tool is expected to detect Aβ protein and other proteins in the blood,” Ashari said on Sunday (Aug. 4).
Ashari noted that the team faced challenges during their research, including difficulties in improving sensor accuracy.
“We encountered challenges in determining the optimal membrane and selecting the appropriate machine learning algorithms for the sensor,” he recalled.
Ashari hopes the electronic tongue innovation can provide an easy, fast, and affordable method for diagnosing Alzheimer’s disease through blood samples without requiring expert human resources.
Author: Lazuardi
Editor: Gusti Grehenson
Photo: Freepik
Post-editor: Afif