In an ongoing effort to find technologies for identifying covid-19, the Sheba Medical Center in Israel announced that in an initial clinical trial of several hundred patients, Newsight Imaging’s spectral device, which can identify and classify evidence of a virus in the body in less than a second, achieved a 95% success rate. Instead of a device costing thousands of dollars, Newsight’s rapid covid-19 test device accomplishes the same task with a single cost-effective chip, using an AI algorithm to separate the profile of a human infected with a specific virus from a human infected with a different virus or from a healthy human. Newsight’s device simultaneously checks 1,024 spectral channels, currently in the visible light spectrum of 400-700 nm. During the span of the ongoing trial, the company plans to present a device that will be capable of examining a spectral profile in wavelengths of up to 1100 nm. Patents for the company’s technology have already been registered worldwide. Sheba’s ARC, which stands for Accelerate, Redesign and Collaborate, is actively engaged in testing and implementing a range of cutting-edge anti-covid technologies at Sheba Medical Center. Newsight, which is based in Ness Ziona (Central Israel) and Sheba’s ARC Innovation Center are also establishing a joint company called Virusight Diagnostics that will make the covid-19 test and other solutions commercially available to the medical community around the globe. “Under laboratory conditions, we were clearly able to differentiate between covid-19 samples that were positive and those that were negative, with a 95% percent accuracy rate,” says Professor Eli Schwartz, of the Center for Geographic Medicine and Tropical Diseases at Sheba Medical Center, who is leading the trial. “For a new AI-based technology such as this, the results are quite encouraging.” Eyal Yatskan, CTO and co-founder of Newsight Imaging, says, “The corona pandemic forced us to be extremely creative. With our team of experts in chip design, optics, and microbiology, in a great collaboration with Prof. Schwartz and his team, we were able to utilize our ground-breaking advantages in the machine vision world, validated in our 3D technology, into the spectral analysis world, and specifically to virus detection. Our AI based solution is unique as we have developed all the technology solution starting from a spectral chip, through its firmware, boards, and of course AI algorithms.” For more information, visit Newsight Imaging and Sheba Medical Center. Featured image: Newsight Spectral device (Courtesy of Sheba Medical Center/Newsight)