Bulk Acoustic Wave Acoustofluidics to Quantify Healthspan in Caenorhabditis Elegans

Across species, a decline in muscular strength is observed during aging, however, a non-invasive in-vivo method to quantify the muscular strength of C. elegans is missing. Here, we developed a method that uses bulk acoustic wave acoustofluidics to confine fully-active C. elegans in an acoustophoretic field within microfluidic channels. C. elegans tries to escape and push against the acoustic force field, and the distance moved against the force field is proportional to its muscular strength. We show how to quantify energy consumption and maximum muscle strength during aging as a highly interpretable healthspan metric.