Automatic Fungal Glucan Analyzer: For the Rapid Laboratory Testing

Abstract

Invasive fungal infections (IFIs) have a high mortality rate, especially in the context of invasive treatments such as the use of high-intensity immunosuppressive drugs and indwelling catheters. It is crucial to have a sensitive instrument for rapid laboratory testing to detect early invasive fungal disease (IFD). Therefore, we propose an automatic fungal dextran analyzer that streamlines sample addition, mixing, and result processing, reducing cross-contamination and enhancing operational efficiency. This analyzer utilizes human serum as the sample and offers rapid point-of-care testing (POCT) for IFD without the need for manual intervention. Each individual sample can be processed in just 45 min, and the instrument has the capacity to handle 24 patient specimens within an hour. To address optoelectronic noise concerns, our instrument's algorithm design incorporates both sliding average filtering and a modified version of the least squares method. The application of these techniques significantly enhances the algorithm's accuracy, resulting in an impressive improvement from 95.82% to 99.98%. The instrument underwent clinical testing using serum samples obtained from 130 subjects. The study findings revealed that the instrument effectively facilitated early diagnosis of IFD, thereby considerably improving the efficiency of the testing process.