Identification of microbes in wounds using near-infrared spectroscopy

Rapid diagnosis of microbes in the burn wound is a big challenge in the medical field. Traditional biochemical detection techniques take hours or days to identify the species of contaminating and drug-resistant microbes. Near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) is evaluated to address the need for a fast and sensitive method for the detection of bacterial contamination in liquids.

Herin, we developed a novel technique which by using NIRS together with supporting vector machine (SVM), to identify the microbial species and drug-resistant microbes in LB medium, and to diagnose the wound colonization and wound infection models of pigs.

The device could recognize 100% of seven kinds of microbes and 99.47% of the multi-drug resistant Staphylococcus aureus (S. aureus), with a concentration of 10⁹ cfu ml^-1 in LB medium. The accuracy of the microbial identification in colonized and infected wounds in-situ was 100%. The detection limit of NIRS with SVM for the detection of S. aureus and Escherichia coli (E. coli) was 10¹ cfu ml^-1 in LB medium. Identification time was less than 5 s.

Our findings validate for the first time a novel technique aimed at the rapid, noncontacted, highly sensitive, and specific recognition of several microbial species including drug-resistant ones. This technique could represent a promising approach to identify diverse microbial species and a potential bedside device to rapidly diagnose infected wounds.