Ultra Wide Band Based Quantitative and Qualtiative Method for Bacterial Endotoxin Detection

The existence of quick and accurate identification and detection methods for bacteria and bacterial endotoxin plays an important role in delivering high quality biomedical products. Healthcare institutions (Medical and Pharmaceutical) realized the importance of a quality control system to ensure the absence of pathogens and pyrogens in the medical products and equipment. The quality control systems used to identify and detect the bacteria and bacterial endotoxins lack speed or accuracy. This work presents a method that uses electromagnetic waves in the Ultra Wide Band (UWB) region of the microwave spectrum to detect and identify bacteria and bacterial endotoxins. The developed method is based on the properties of interaction between organic materials and electromagnetic waves. The interaction is measured quantitatively and qualitatively. The scattered parameters of sample networks are measured and cepstrum coefficients are estimated for the analysis of the scattered parameters signals’ energies. Experimental results proved effective identification and detection of bacterial endotoxin even with concentrations as low as 0.0003 EU/ml; the developed method can be extended to detect and identify the presence of different bacteria.