DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The long-term goal of the proposed research is to develop a novel quantitative particle agglutination technology for improving the performance of blood typing assays. The conventional hemagglutination blood typing assays have serious drawbacks such as limited sensitivity, long time of incubation, subjectivity and large amount of reagents. It is in this context that we propose to develop a new technology, which is free from the aforementioned limitations of the conventional hemagglutination assays. The proposed immunoassay is a sensitive and rapid method that utilizes inexpensive instrumentation. Significantly, the method presents a general approach for enhancement and detection of agglutination of particles of different origin, including latex, silica microparticles, and biologial cells.