Three graduate students will present their research at the second Beckman Institute Graduate Student Seminar of the spring 2022 semester: Yongdeok Kim, materials science and engineering; Neha Goswami, bioengineering; and Yudu Li, electrical and computer engineering. The event takes place Wednesday, March 2 at noon. Register to attend on Zoom.
Rapid and label-free detection and classification of SARS-CoV-2 through phase imaging with computational specificity
Neha Goswami, bioengineering
Rapid detection of the SARS-CoV-2 virus and potentially other pathogens is the need of the hour. Current testing methods involve the use of external agents like stains, chemicals, or plasmonic sensors, which increase the cost and testing time. In this talk, I will discuss a rapid, label-free optical detection method for SARS-CoV-2 that is aimed at detecting the virus in the patient’s breath condensates. Using phase imaging with computational specificity (PICS), we can detect and classify SARS-CoV-2 versus other viruses (H1N1, HAdV and ZIKV) with 96% accuracy, within a minute after sample collection. Currently, we are working on the clinical validation of our proposed method. We have received breath samples of patients collected by our collaborators at UIC, and we are in the process of training our deep neural network for SARS-CoV-2 detection. Cross-validation of test results will be done through the gold-standard PCR test on the saliva sample collected from same patient. We aim to bring our method of combining quantitative phase imaging with machine learning to clinics for SARS-CoV-2 detection. This method can potentially be applied for detection of other pathogens as well.
Biography
Neha Goswami is a fourth-year Ph.D. student in the Department of Bioengineering. She works in the Quantitative Light Imaging Lab at the Beckman Institute under the supervision of Gabriel Popescu. She obtained her M.S. in photonics science and engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur in 2015, and her B.S. in electrical and computer engineering from Graphic Era University, India in 2012. She was a research assistant in electrical engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay from 2016 to 2018. Neha's research interests revolve around developing optical techniques for biomedical imaging. Since the beginning of the pandemic, she has been working to develop a rapid, label-free SARS-CoV-2 detection technique through phase imaging with computational specificity. Pre-clinical results of the technique are published, and the clinical validation is underway. She received a 2021 Nadine Barrie Smith Memorial Fellowship for this work.
