Columbia Technology Ventures

Smartphone application for COVID-19 rapid test interpretation

This technology is a smartphone application with several deep convolutional neural networks for quality control and classification of images from lateral flow immunoassays (LFIAs).

Unmet Need: Simple smartphone-based app for assessing the results of lateral flow immunoassays

Current methods for interpreting lateral flow immunoassays (LFIAs), such as COVID-19 rapid tests and pregnancy tests, involve the user assessing the results by eye. Although the results are usually readily observable, LFIAs may produce an ambiguous result, particularly if the analyte being probed is in low abundance. Therefore, there is a need for an unbiased and automated method to interpret LFIAs.

The Technology: Accurate quality control and classification of LFIA images

This technology is a smartphone application that uses machine learning to read and interpret LFIA data using the phone’s built-in camera. The pipeline consists of several deep convolutional neural networks for quality control and classification of LFIA images. The quality control network ensures the image is of high quality and the classification network outputs a diagnosis as either positive, negative, indeterminate, or invalid. This system can be easily adapted for quantification of other tests with visually represented results (i.e., pregnancy tests).

Training, validating, and testing of the network has been done on approximately 20,000 different LFIA images captured on various phone models, including iPhone X and Samsung Galaxy Note 10.

Applications:

  • Diagnostic tool for COVID-19
  • Diagnostic tool for other diseases using LFIA-based tests (infectious diseases)
  • Pregnancy detection
  • Quantifying metabolites in blood or serum (glucose)
  • Detecting contaminants in food and water (mercury)
  • Drug testing and screening

Advantages:

  • Easy to use
  • Avoids human error
  • Compatible with multiple devices and lateral flow immunoassay tests
  • Cost-effective

Lead Inventor:

Helen H. Lu, Ph.D.

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