Selective Electrochemical Detection of SARS-CoV-2 Using Deep Learning

COVID-19 has been in the headlines for the past two years. Diagnosing this infection with minimal false rates is still an issue even with the advent of multiple rapid antigen tests. Enormous data are being collected every day that could provide insight into reducing the false diagnosis. Machine learning (ML) and deep learning (DL) could be the way forward to process these data and reduce the false diagnosis rates. In this study, ML and DL approaches have been applied to the data set collected using an ultra-fast COVID-19 diagnostic sensor (UFC-19). The ability of ML and DL to specifically detect SARS-CoV-2 signals against SARS-CoV, MERS-CoV, Human CoV, and Influenza was investigated. UFC-19 is an electrochemical sensor that was used to test these virus samples and the obtained current response dataset was used to diagnose SARS-CoV-2 using different algorithms. Our results indicate that the convolution neural networks algorithm could diagnose SARS-CoV-2 samples with a sensitivity of 96.15%, specificity of 98.17%, and accuracy of 97.20%. Combining this DL model with the existing UFC-19 could selectively identify SARS-CoV-2 presence within two minutes.