Dielectric spectroscopy technique for detection of human respiratory syncytial virus

Abstract

AbstractHuman respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) can be serious for infants and older adults, though it is considered a common respiratory virus for most people. Rapid and sensitive detection of RSV is important for minimizing infection, and an effective diagnostic method is still in demand. Dielectric spectroscopy is a technique for measuring the complex permittivity spectra of a material‐under‐test (MUT). The spectra can provide a unique fingerprint of the MUT for higher detection accuracy. In this article, a dielectric spectroscopy technique, which uses an open‐ended coaxial probe submerged in aqueous biological materials, is presented for the detection of RSV. From the reflection coefficients at the end of an open‐ended coaxial probe, complex permittivity spectra over the frequency range of 0.1‐26.5 GHz are extracted and used to characterize the three different biological materials: RSV, RSV + an antibody targeting the RSV, and bovine serum albumin (BSA), which is used as a negative control sample in this article. It is shown that the RSV and RSV + antibody can be differentiated from BSA by three distinct features: (a) the real part of the complex permittivity spectra, (b) the ionic loss characteristic below 1 GHz, and (c) the relaxation frequency. These three features enable us to identify the presence of RSV in an aqueous biological material.