Background

This study reports the outcome of the first evaluation of the APAS® Independence for automated reading and preliminary interpretation of urine cultures in the routine clinical microbiology laboratory. In a 2-stage evaluation involving 3000 urine samples, two objectives were assessed; 1) the sensitivity and specificity of the APAS® Independence compared to microbiologists using colony enumeration as the primary determinant, and 2) the variability between microbiologists in enumerating bacterial cultures using traditional culture reading techniques, performed independently to APAS® Independence interpretation.

Methods

Routine urine samples received into the laboratory were processed and culture plates were interpreted by standard methodology and with the APAS® Independence. Results were compared using typical discrepant result resolution and with a composite reference standard, which provided an alternative assessment of performance.

Results

The significant growth sensitivity of the APAS® Independence was determined to be 0.919 with a 95% confidence interval of (0.879, 0.948), and the growth specificity was 0.877 with a 95% confidence interval of (0.827, 0.916). Variability between microbiologists was demonstrated with microbiologist bi-plate enumerations in agreement with the consensus 88.6% of the time.

Conclusion

The APAS® Independence appears to offer microbiology laboratories a mechanism to standardise the processing and assessment of urine cultures whilst augmenting the skills of specialist microbiology staff.

中文翻译：

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APAS®独立性的临床评估：使用人工智能和复合参考标准差异分辨率自动对尿液培养物进行成像和解释。

背景

这项研究报告了在常规临床微生物学实验室中对尿液培养物的自动读取和初步解释进行的APAS®独立性首次评估的结果。在涉及3000个尿液样本的2阶段评估中，评估了两个目标：1）与使用菌落枚举作为主要决定因素的微生物学家相比，APAS®独立性的敏感性和特异性； 2）使用传统培养物阅读技术对细菌培养物进行计数的微生物学家之间的变异性，独立于APAS®独立性解释进行。

方法

处理进入实验室的常规尿液样品，并通过标准方法和独立的APAS®技术对培养板进行解释。使用典型的差异结果分辨率和综合参考标准对结果进行比较，后者提供了性能的替代评估。

结果

确定APAS®独立的显着生长敏感性为0.919，置信区间为95％（0.879，0.948），生长特异性为0.877，置信区间95％为（0.827，0.916）。微生物学家双板枚举证明了微生物学家之间的差异，与88.6％的时间一致。

结论

APAS®Independence似乎为微生物实验室提供了一种机制，可以标准化尿培养物的处理和评估，同时可以增强微生物专家的技能。