Development and Evaluation of a High-Performance Electrochemical Potentiostat-Based Desktop Application for Rapid SARS-CoV-2 Testing

Authors

Faisal Ahmed Assaig
ECE Department, Faculty of Engineering, International Islamic University Malaysia
Teddy Surya Gunawan
ECE Department, Faculty of Engineering, International Islamic University Malaysia
Anis Nurashikin Nordin
ECE Department, Faculty of Engineering, International Islamic University Malaysia
Rosminazuin Ab. Rahim
ECE Department, Faculty of Engineering, International Islamic University Malaysia
Zainihariyati Mohd Zain
Electrochemical Material and Sensor (EMaS), Faculty of Applied Sciences, Universiti Teknologi MARA (UiTM), 40450 Shah Alam, Selangor, Malaysia
Rozainanee Mohd Zain
Institute for Medical Research (IMR), National Institute of Health (NIH), 40170 Shah Alam, Selangor, Malaysia
Fatchul Arifin
Department of Electronic and Informatics Engineering, Universitas Negeri Yogyakarta, Yogyakarta, Indonesia
DOI: https://doi.org/10.52549/ijeei.v11i2.4645
Download PDF
Published: 31-05-2023 • Issue: Vol. 11 No. 2: June 2023 • Section: Electronics_&_Signal_Processing

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has necessitated the development of rapid and trustworthy diagnostic tools. Reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) is the gold standard for detecting SARS-CoV-2 but has cost and time constraints. The sensitivity, specificity, and low cost of electrochemical biosensors make them an attractive alternative for virus detection. This study aims to develop and evaluate a high-performance desktop application for an electrochemical potentiostat-based SARS-CoV-2 test device, with a user-friendly interface that automatically interprets results, to expedite the testing process and improve accessibility, particularly in resource-limited settings. The application was built with the Electron framework and the HTML, CSS, and JavaScript programming languages. Our findings indicate that the developed electrochemical potentiostat-based desktop application demonstrates high accuracy compared to commercial software, achieving rapid detection within 30 seconds. The graphical user interface was found to be straightforward and user-friendly, requiring minimal training for efficient system operation. Our electrochemical potentiostat-based desktop application represents a valuable tool for rapid SARS-CoV-2 testing, particularly in settings with limited resources. This research contributes to developing rapid and reliable diagnostic tools for SARS-CoV-2 and potentially other pandemic-causing viruses, addressing the pressing need for improved public health surveillance and response strategies.
Keywords: SARS-CoV-2; Electrochemical potentiostat; Web technologies; Desktop application; Virus detection; Rapid testing; Cross-platform apps; User-friendly interface

References

WHO. "World Health Organization, Coronavirus (COVID-19) Dashboard." https://covid19.who.int/ [accessed 27 March, 2023].

C. Huang et al., "Clinical features of patients infected with 2019 novel coronavirus in Wuhan, China," The lancet, vol. 395, no. 10223, pp. 497-506, 2020.

S. A. Abid et al., "Biosensors as a future diagnostic approach for COVID-19," Life sciences, vol. 273, p. 119117, 2021.

M. Wang et al., "Clinical diagnosis of 8274 samples with 2019-novel coronavirus in Wuhan," MedRxiv, p. 2020.02. 12.20022327, 2020.

J. P. Broughton et al., "CRISPR–Cas12-based detection of SARS-CoV-2," Nature biotechnology, vol. 38, no. 7, pp. 870-874, 2020.

G. S. Park et al., "Development of Reverse Transcription Loop-Mediated Isothermal Amplification Assays Targeting Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2)," J Mol Diagn, vol. 22, no. 6, pp. 729-735, Jun 2020, doi: 10.1016/j.jmoldx.2020.03.006.

IEC, "IEC 62304:2006+A1:2020. Medical device software - Software life cycle processes," International Electrotechnical Commission, 2020.

ISO, "ISO 14971:2019. Medical devices - Application of risk management to medical devices," International Organization for Standardization, 2019.

ISO, "ISO 13485:2016. Medical devices - Quality management systems - Requirements for regulatory purposes," International Organization for Standardization, 2016.

USFDA, "General Principles of Software Validation; Final Guidance for Industry and FDA Staff," US Food and Drug Administration, 2002.

A. Singh et al., "Recent advances in electrochemical biosensors: Applications, challenges, and future scope," Biosensors, vol. 11, no. 9, p. 336, 2021.

I.-H. Cho, D. H. Kim, and S. Park, "Electrochemical biosensors: Perspective on functional nanomaterials for on-site analysis," Biomaterials research, vol. 24, no. 1, pp. 1-12, 2020.

J. Wang, "Electrochemical biosensors: towards point-of-care cancer diagnostics," Biosensors and Bioelectronics, vol. 21, no. 10, pp. 1887-1892, 2006.

A. Saleh Ahammad, J.-J. Lee, and M. A. Rahman, "Electrochemical sensors based on carbon nanotubes," sensors, vol. 9, no. 4, pp. 2289-2319, 2009.

E. Yuhana Ariffin, L. Y. Heng, L. L. Tan, N. H. Abd Karim, and S. A. Hasbullah, "A highly sensitive impedimetric DNA biosensor based on hollow silica microspheres for label-free determination of E. coli," Sensors, vol. 20, no. 5, p. 1279, 2020.

C. Kataoka-Hamai and Y. Miyahara, "Label-free detection of DNA by field-effect devices," IEEE Sensors Journal, vol. 11, no. 12, pp. 3153-3160, 2011.

S. Wang, J. Zhang, O. Gharbi, V. Vivier, M. Gao, and M. E. Orazem, "Electrochemical impedance spectroscopy," Nature Reviews Methods Primers, vol. 1, no. 1, p. 41, 2021.

M. Sumitha and T. Xavier, "Recent advances in electrochemical biosensors–A brief review," Hybrid Advances, p. 100023, 2023.

A. J. Bard, L. R. Faulkner, and H. S. White, Electrochemical methods: fundamentals and applications. John Wiley & Sons, 2022.

R. J. Narayan, Medical Biosensors for Point of Care (POC) Applications. Woodhead Publishing, 2016.

PalmSens. "PalmSens SDKs for .NET." https://www.palmsens.com/palmsens-sdks-for-net/ [accessed 27 March, 2023].

G. L. Scoccia and M. Autili, "Web Frameworks for Desktop Apps: an Exploratory Study," presented at the Proceedings of the 14th ACM / IEEE International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement (ESEM), 2020.

G. L. Scoccia, P. Migliarini, and M. Autili, "Challenges in Developing Desktop Web Apps: a Study of Stack Overflow and GitHub," presented at the 2021 IEEE/ACM 18th International Conference on Mining Software Repositories (MSR), 2021.

P. B. Jensen and C. Zhao, "Cross-Platform Desktop Applications USING ELECTRON AND NW.JS " 2017.

M. Jasim, Building Cross-Platform Desktop Applications with Electron. 2017.

K. Kredpattanakul and Y. Limpiyakorn, "Transforming JavaScript-Based Web Application to Cross-Platform Desktop with Electron," Information Science and Applications 2018, pp. 571-579, 2019, doi: 10.1007/978-981-13-1056-0_56.

A. Kumar B and S. Anitha, "Development of Cross-Platform Desktop Apps using Electron Framework," 2018.

M. K. F. M. Atan, R. A. Rahim, A. N. Nordin, T. S. Gunawan, and Z. M. Zain, "Investigation of Fluid Flow System Performance for Biosensor Application," in 2022 IEEE 8th International Conference on Smart Instrumentation, Measurement and Applications (ICSIMA), 2022: IEEE, pp. 159-162.

M. A. Abdul Ghani et al., "Portable Electrochemical Biosensors Based on Microcontrollers for Detection of Viruses: A Review," Biosensors, vol. 12, no. 8, p. 666, 2022.

M. A. A. Ghani, A. N. Nordin, R. A. Rahim, T. S. Gunawan, and Z. M. Zain, "Evaluation of Portable Potentiostats for Electrochemical Measurements: Voltammetry and Impedance Spectroscopy," in 2022 IEEE 8th International Conference on Smart Instrumentation, Measurement and Applications (ICSIMA), 2022: IEEE, pp. 132-137.

A. C. M. Nor, Z. M. Zain, and M. S. A. Noorden, "Application and Modification of RT-LAMP for Rapid Detection of SARS-CoV-2 Viral Genome," Malaysian Journal of Medicine and Health Sciences, vol. 19, no. 2, pp. 286-292, 2023.

M. Akshay Kumaar, D. Samiayya, P. Vincent, K. Srinivasan, C. Y. Chang, and H. Ganesh, "A Hybrid Framework for Intrusion Detection in Healthcare Systems Using Deep Learning," Front Public Health, vol. 9, p. 824898, 2021, doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2021.824898.

T. S. Gunawan, M. K. Lim, M. Kartiwi, N. A. Malik, and N. Ismail, "Penetration testing using Kali linux: SQL injection, XSS, wordpres, and WPA2 attacks," Indonesian Journal of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, vol. 12, no. 2, pp. 729-737, 2018.

A. Halbouni, T. S. Gunawan, M. H. Habaebi, M. Halbouni, M. Kartiwi, and R. Ahmad, "Machine learning and deep learning approaches for cybersecuriy: A review," IEEE Access, 2022.

A. Halbouni, T. S. Gunawan, M. H. Habaebi, M. Halbouni, M. Kartiwi, and R. Ahmad, "CNN-LSTM: hybrid deep neural network for network intrusion detection system," IEEE Access, vol. 10, pp. 99837-99849, 2022.

Author Biographies

Faisal Ahmed Assaig
ECE Department, Faculty of Engineering
Teddy Surya Gunawan
Professor Teddy Surya Gunawan received his BEng degree in Electrical Engineering with cum laude award from Institut Teknologi Bandung (ITB), Indonesia, in 1998. He obtained his M.Eng degree in 2001 from the School of Computer Engineering at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, and a PhD degree in 2007 from the School of Electrical Engineering and Telecommunications, The University of New South Wales, Australia. His research interests are speech and audio processing, biomedical signal processing and instrumentation, image and video processing, and parallel computing. He was awarded the Best Researcher Award in 2018 from IIUM. He is currently an IEEE Senior Member (since 2012), was chairman of IEEE Instrumentation and Measurement Society – Malaysia Section (2013 and 2014), Professor (since 2019), Head of Department (2015-2016) at Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Head of Programme Accreditation and Quality Assurance for Faculty of Engineering (2017-2018), International Islamic University Malaysia. He is Chartered Engineer (IET, UK) and Insinyur Profesional Madya (PII, Indonesia) since 2016,  upgraded to Insinyur Profesional Utama (PII, Indonesia) since 2021, a registered ASEAN engineer since 2018, and ASEAN Chartered Professional Engineer since 2020.

How to Cite

[1]
F. A. Assaig et al., “Development and Evaluation of a High-Performance Electrochemical Potentiostat-Based Desktop Application for Rapid SARS-CoV-2 Testing”, IJEEI, vol. 11, no. 2, pp. 349–365, May 2023, doi: 10.52549/ijeei.v11i2.4645.