Use of compressed sensing to expedite high-throughput diagnostic testing for COVID-19 and beyond

The rapid spread of SARS-CoV-2 has placed a significant burden on public health systems to provide swift and accurate diagnostic testing highlighting the critical need for innovative testing approaches for future pandemics. In this study, we present a novel sample pooling procedure based on compressed sensing theory to accurately identify virally infected patients at high prevalence rates utilizing an innovative viral RNA extraction process to minimize sample dilution. At prevalence rates ranging from 0–14.3%, the number of tests required to identify the infection status of all patients was reduced by 69.26% as compared to conventional testing in primary human SARS-CoV-2 nasopharyngeal swabs and a coronavirus model system. Our method provided quantification of individual sample viral load within a pool as well as a binary positive-negative result. Additionally, our modified pooling and RNA extraction process minimized sample dilution which remained constant as pool sizes increased. Compressed sensing can be adapted to a wide variety of diagnostic testing applications to increase throughput for routine laboratory testing as well as a means to increase testing capacity to combat future pandemics.