Emergent Advancements in M.tb Detection: An Artificial Intelligence Approach (Preprint)

BACKGROUND Infectious diseases are the major cause of mortality across the globe. Tuberculosis is one such infectious disease which is in the top 10 deaths causing diseases in developing as well as developed countries. The biosensors have emerged as a promising approach to attain the early detection of the pathogenic infection with accuracy and precision. However, the main challenge with biosensors is real time data monitoring preferentially reversible and label free measurements of certain analytes. Integration of biosensor and Artificial Intelligence (AI) approach would enable better acquisition of patient’s data in real time manner enabling automatic detection and monitoring of Mycobacterium tuberculosis (M.tb.) at an early stage. Here we propose a biosensor based smart handheld device that can be designed for automatic detection and real time monitoring of M.tb from varied analytic sources including DNA, proteins and biochemical metabolites. The collected data would be continuously transferred to the connected cloud integrated with AI based clinical decision support systems (CDSS) which may consist of the machine learning based analysis model useful in studying the patterns of disease infestation, progression, early detection and treatment. The proposed system may get deployed in different collaborating centres for validation and collecting the real time data. OBJECTIVE To propose a biosensor based smart handheld device that can be designed for automatic detection and real time monitoring of M.tb from varied analytic sources including DNA, proteins and biochemical metabolites. METHODS The Major challenges for control and early detection of the Mycobacterium tuberculosis were studied based upon the literature survey. Based upon the observed challenges, the biosensor based smart handheld device has been proposed for automatic detection and real time monitoring of M.tb from varied analytic sources including DNA, proteins and biochemical metabolites. RESULTS In this viewpoint, we propose an application based novel approach of combining AI based machine learning algorithms on the real time data collected with the use of biosensor technology which can serve as a point of care system for early diagnosis of the disease which would be low cost, simple, responsive, measurable, can diagnose and distinguish between active and passive cases, include single patient visits, cause considerable inconvenience, can evaluate the cough sample, require minimum material aid and experienced staff, and is user-friendly. CONCLUSIONS In this viewpoint, we propose an application based novel approach of combining AI based machine learning algorithms on the real time data collected with the use of biosensor technology which can serve as a point of care system for early diagnosis of the disease which would be low cost, simple, responsive, measurable, can diagnose and distinguish between active and passive cases, include single patient visits, cause considerable inconvenience, can evaluate the cough sample, require minimum material aid and experienced staff, and is user-friendly.