Integrated Ultrasound‐Enrichment and Machine Learning in Colorimetric Lateral Flow Assay for Accurate and Sensitive Clinical Alzheimer's Biomarker Diagnosis

Abstract

The colloidal gold nanoparticle (AuNP)‐based colorimetric lateral flow assay (LFA) is one of the most promising analytical tools for point‐of‐care disease diagnosis. However, the low sensitivity and insufficient accuracy still limit its clinical application. In this work, a machine learning (ML)‐optimized colorimetric LFA with ultrasound enrichment is developed to achieve the sensitive and accurate detection of tau proteins for early screening of Alzheimer's disease (AD). The LFA device is integrated with a portable ultrasonic actuator to rapidly enrich microparticles using ultrasound, which is essential for sample pre‐enrichment to improve the sensitivity, followed by ML algorithms to classify and predict the enhanced colorimetric signals. The results of the undiluted serum sample testing show that the protocol enables efficient classification and accurate quantification of the AD biomarker tau protein concentration with an average classification accuracy of 98.11% and an average prediction accuracy of 99.99%, achieving a limit of detection (LOD) as sensitive as 10.30 pg mL−1. Further point‐of‐care testing (POCT) of human plasma samples demonstrates the potential use of LFA in clinical trials. Such a reliable lateral flow immunosensor with high precision and superb sensing performance is expected to put LFA in perspective as an AD clinical diagnostic platform.