Almost half of the world’s population is at risk of malaria infection, with children and pregnant women at the highest risk of getting sick and dying from the disease. Current methods to detect this potentially deadly infection rely on obtaining an invasive blood sample, and each test has significant limitations that restrict its utility.

In new research published in Nature Communications, Yale School of Public Health epidemiologist Dr. Sunil Parikh, MD, MPH, and colleagues from the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences and Cameroon present a new noninvasive test that could dramatically alter the global malaria testing landscape by providing reliable, safe, and sensitive testing to low- and middle-income countries that have been plagued by the deadly mosquito-borne disease.

Best of all, the new test can detect malaria without taking a single drop of blood.

The test is performed using a device called a Cytophone that applies targeted lasers and ultrasound to detect malaria-infected cells circulating in the bloodstream, said Dr. Jillian N. Armstrong, a former PhD student in Parikh’s lab and one of the study’s lead authors. About the size of a table-top printer, the Cytophone prototype uses photoacoustic technology that can determine whether infection is present within minutes via a small noninvasive probe that is placed on the back of a person’s hand above a targeted vein.