One-second coronavirus test achieves 95% success rate - initial data

In spectroscopy, a sample is tested with a broadband light source, Newsight CEO Eli Assoolin told 'The Jerusalem Post.'

By MAAYAN JAFFE-HOFFMAN
Left to Right: Eli Assolin, CEO & Co-founder-Newsight Imaging Prof. Eli Schwartz, Sheba Medical Center Eyal Yatskan, CTO & Co-founder, Newsight Imaging (photo credit: Courtesy)
Left to Right: Eli Assolin, CEO & Co-founder-Newsight Imaging Prof. Eli Schwartz, Sheba Medical Center Eyal Yatskan, CTO & Co-founder, Newsight Imaging
(photo credit: Courtesy)
An initial clinical trial of a coronavirus-testing technology that is believed to detect viruses in a fluid sample in less than a second has achieved a 95% success rate, according to data released last week from the trial performed at Sheba Medical Center, Tel Hashomer.
The test was designed by Newsight Imaging, a Ness Ziona-based start-up firm, and centers on a device that is about the size of a computer mouse, which can identify and classify evidence of a virus in the body in less than a second, using a sample of fluid – blood serum or saliva – inserted into a disposable test cuvette.
In spectroscopy, a sample is tested with a broadband light source, Newsight CEO Eli Assoolin told The Jerusalem Post last month when it first received Sheba Medical Center’s IRB Ethics (“Helsinki”) Committee approval to conduct a pilot program for rapid COVID-19 detection tests. The light that returns from the sample is analyzed to determine its wavelength content.
“We collect the spectral signature after the light is absorbed in the sample, and then we can analyze the content of it,” he said, noting that spectral-analysis technology has already been used to identify certain human diseases and abnormalities.
“Basically, on one side, you have the source of light, and on the other side, you have the sensor chip – a sensitive and fast camera that can see different wavelengths. In the middle, you put the sample,” Assoolin said.
Prof. Eli Schwartz of the Center for Geographic Medicine and Tropical Diseases at Sheba said that under laboratory conditions, the research team was clearly able to differentiate between COVID-19 samples that were positive and those that were negative, with a 95% accuracy rate.
“For a new AI-based technology such as this, the results are quite encouraging,” Schwartz said.
During the span of the ongoing trial, which is being conducted through Sheba’s ARC, an acronym that stands for Accelerate, Redesign and Collaborate, the company plans to present a device that will be capable of examining a spectral profile in wavelengths of up to 1,100 nm.
Patents for the company’s technology have already been registered worldwide. Newsight and the ARC are also establishing a joint company called Virusight Diagnostics, Ltd., which will make the COVID-19 test and other ground-breaking solutions commercially available to the medical community around the globe.
“The coronavirus pandemic forced us to be extremely creative,” Eyal Yatskan, CTO and co-founder of Newsight said.
Added Assoolin in his previous interview: “We are really excited that we are doing something like this – not just from a business standpoint, but because we feel we are doing something for humanity.”