UAE develops fast coronavirus laser testing technology

ABU DHABI – QuantLase Imaging Lab announced Tuesday that it has developed equipment for faster mass screenings of the novel coronavirus, according to state news agency WAM.

The technology will enable the United Arab Emirates to get COVID-19 results in seconds and help the country carry out tests on a mass scale and save human lives.

It will also boost the Gulf Arab State’s stance as an international hub of research and innovation.

Abdul Rahman bin Mohammad bin Nasser Al Owais, Minister of Health and Prevention, said that “we are always following innovations related to the early and rapid detection of COVID–19.”

“The government is keen on supporting initiatives that help the healthcare system in the UAE. Health officials have been closely monitoring the progress of trials with QuantLase in order to test this equipment,” said Owais.

“We are proud to see a technology that works and that will help to protect our people better,” he added.

Dr Pramod Kumar, who leads the team of researchers at the lab which has been studying the change in cell structure of the virus-infected blood, said that the equipment, which uses a CMOS detector, will enable mass-scale screening with results made available in seconds.

“In fact, our laser-based DPI (Diffractive Phase Interferometry) technique, based on optical-phase modulation, is able to give a signature of infection within a few seconds,” said Kumar.

“What’s more, it is user-friendly, non-invasive and low-cost. The device is suitable for use not only in hospitals and public places like cinemas and shopping malls, but with a ‘little hands-on training’ it can be used for in-house testing and monitoring. We believe it will be a game-changer in tackling the spread of the coronavirus,” he added.

Kumar said that an advanced Artificial Intelligence image-analysis model predicts the outcome of each image with precision, speed and scale.

This is especially critical in large-scale testing programs, where a massive number of images needs to be analysed with accuracy and efficiency.

The lab, which is the medical-research arm of the Abu Dhabi Stock Exchange-listed International Holdings Company, is using G42, a leading AI and Cloud Computing company, to further enhance the laser program.

"With the first 1,000 tests, we refined our experiment and then applied it to the rest of the trials," Dr Kumar said.

“The process passed through several stages, and most recently was being trialled on a large scale, in line with current testing procedures,” he added.