The new test method, developed by Technion researchers and published in the journal Nature Communications, takes just 30 seconds, thus reducing its cost by about 98 percent.
This innovative technology may hasten the early diagnosis of diseases, as first application to be tested will be the early detection of various cancerous tumors based on blood tests.
The method is based on a combination of a mass spectrometer device that determines the concentrations of molecules in biological samples, and computational methods developed by the team.
Testing using this device typically requires a time-consuming, expensive preliminary process called chromatography, entailing the separation of the materials in the sample according to chemical properties.
However, the new method skips this step without impairing the quality of the analysis.
The method identifies optimal working configurations in the device, which allows for a high-sensitivity analysis for specific types of biological samples.
The computational analysis also corrects the measured raw information and accurately quantifies concentrations of thousands of molecules in blood samples.