The Research that Improved COVID-19 Testing, Presented at the SPIE Conference

In January 2024, two researchers from Prof. Amos Danielli’s Optical Imaging and Biosensing Laboratory presented their groundbreaking works, which were immediately adopted for public use. Ph.D. student Shmuel Burg and Faculty of Engineering alumnus Dr. Michael Margulis both lectured at the annual conference of the International Society for Optics and Photonics (SPIE).

Shmuel Burg develops highly sensitive and high throughput systems for rapid detection of biomarkers at low concentrations. This technology, known as high throughput Optical Modulation Biosensing (ht-OMB) was developed by Mr. Burg from concept to commercialization. During one of the recent COVID-19 outbreaks, he took part in turning it into a fully automated system for early SARS-Cov-2 detection, as part of a contract between the Israeli ministries of Defense and Health with MagBiosense Inc., the company that commercializes the technology via Birad Bar-Ilan. In addition to COVID-19 detection, the system, OMBi, can detect other pathogens. In his lecture, Mr. Burg presented the results of swab-tested samples from 236 healthy individuals, and 70 confirmed positive for SARS-Cov-2. The system demonstrated 100% specificity and 95% sensitivity in detecting both positive and negative cases.

Dr. Michael Margulis developed a new molecular biological test for detecting SARS-CoV-2 using an innovative saliva-based sampling technique. The test is highly sensitive as an RT-qPCR and takes only 50 minutes instead of the standard 2-3 hours. In addition, compared to swab testing, saliva sampling is a less invasive and more accurate method. In collaboration with the Ministry of Health, a pilot was conducted during a COVID-19 outbreak to sample 364 individuals using both methods. In his lecture, Dr. Margulis presented the results of saliva sampling tested using the OMBi system, yielding outcomes with 95% specificity and 91% sensitivity.