The researchers at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) Bengaluru are working on rapid identification of COVID-19 biomarkers in blood plasma using Raman spectroscopy and Artificial Intelligence (AI). The research is being carried out in collaboration with AIIMS, Bhopal, which will be providing patient samples and healthy controls.

Traditionally a chemist's tool, Raman Spectroscopy is a non-destructive chemical analysis technique that probes bond variations and is very sensitive to any structural changes, providing a molecular fingerprint of the sample. Because every disease is linked with a certain change in biochemistry, the test aims to identify the disease with this approach. 

According to the IISc researchers, with the help of AI and deep learning, the process of detecting Covid-19 will be automated and rapid, eliminating the requirement of the extraction procedure. "It is of critical importance to develop new technologies that can rapidly detect COVID-19 and perform mass testing, and at the same are cost-effective. In this regard, Raman spectroscopy holds significant promise," news agency PTI quoted Dipankar Nandi, Professor at IISc Bangalore and principal investigator of the project.

"Our proposal is directed at identifying COVID-19 biomarkers in the blood plasma of infected patients. The only requirement is a spectrometer and the patient samples. Spectra collected from infected COVID-19 patients and healthy controls will be used for training and building robust classification models," according to Nandi.