The mythical Star Trek Tricoder would seem to need a few basic technologies to be brought into existence. This is one of them. And it’s being miniaturized to the point where field-diagnosis might be possible. It could theoretically detect any molecule for which it has trained nanoparticles. Couple this with other nanoparticles that could attach to the bad matter and serve as a lightning post for a strong RF field (as is being done for cancer research), and you have yourself an external immune system to detect and treat a host of illnesses on the spot.

Fascinating, isn’t it, that the first basic applications of nanotech simply use nanoparticles as glue. Imagine what’ll be possible when te nanoparticles give way to nanomachines, capable of actually repairing and/or changing basic biological processes, and then changing matter itself.

Miniaturised scanner zooms in on disease – tech – 08 July 2008 – New Scientist Tech

In conventional NMR spectroscopy machines, powerful fields are necessary to line up individual nuclei.

However, Ralph Weissleder at Harvard Medical School in Cambridge, Massachusetts, US, and colleagues have found that magnetic nanoparticles generate a much larger signal than single nuclei, and can thus be detected using the weaker fields from small permanent magnets.

The trick that Weissleder and colleagues have perfected is to coat these nanoparticles with molecules that bind to specific biomolecules, or bacteria and viruses.

This binding process causes the nanoparticles to clump together, producing a measurable change in the signal they produce. In this way, the team says it can identify a large variety of biological targets.

The team has squeezed the electronics that detect and interpret the signals onto a chip just 2 millimetres square (pdf format).