A non‐invasive, at‐home test for neonatal jaundice can facilitate early jaundice detection in infants, improving clinical outcomes for neonates with severe jaundice and helping to prevent the development of kernicterus, a type of brain damage whose symptoms include hearing loss, impairment of cognitive capacity, and death. Here a photonic sensor that utilizes color changes induced by analyte infiltration into a chemically functionalized inverse opal structure is developed. The sensor is calibrated to detect differences in urinary surface tension due to increased bile salt concentration in urine, which is symptomatic of abnormal liver function and linked to jaundice. The correlation between neonatal urinary surface tension and excess serum bilirubin, the physiologic cause of neonatal jaundice, is explored. It is shown that these non‐invasive sensors can improve the preliminary diagnosis of neonatal jaundice, reducing the number of invasive blood tests and hospital visits necessary for healthy infants while ensuring that jaundiced infants are treated in a timely manner. The use of inverse opal sensors to measure bulk property changes in bodily fluids can be extended to the detection of several other conditions, making this technology a versatile platform for convenient point‐of‐care diagnosis.

中文翻译：

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反蛋白石膜的医学传感：在新生儿黄疸的诊断中的应用

新生儿黄疸的非侵入性在家检查可以促进婴儿早期黄疸的检测，改善患有重度黄疸的新生儿的临床结局，并有助于预防核仁的发展，这是一种脑损伤，其症状包括听力丧失，听力障碍，认知能力和死亡。在此开发了一种光子传感器，该传感器利用了由分析物渗透到化学功能化的反蛋白石结构中引起的颜色变化。传感器经过校准，可以检测由于尿液中胆汁盐浓度升高而引起的尿液表面张力差异，这是肝功能异常的征兆，与黄疸有关。探讨了新生儿尿液表面张力与血清黄素过多（新生儿黄疸的生理原因）之间的相关性。结果表明，这些非侵入式传感器可以改善新生儿黄疸的初步诊断，减少健康婴儿必需的侵入性血液检查和医院就诊次数，同时确保及时治疗黄疸婴儿。可以将反蛋白石传感器用于测量体液中大量物质的变化，从而扩展到检测其他几种情况，从而使该技术成为方便现场诊断的多功能平台。