TBscan

Helping Doctors detect TB faster, cheaper and easier.

The problem of Tuberculosis

TBscan Technology

  • TBscan Technology addresses the urgent need for a rapid, affordable, and user-friendly diagnostic solution for tuberculosis (TB), a disease with significant global impact, causing over a million deaths annually.
  • With TBscan, healthcare workers or even volunteers can implement broad-scale screening of populations in emerging economy nations, facilitating early identification, isolation, and treatment of individuals with active TB, thereby curbing transmission.
  • TBscan's innovative approach aims to tackle the key bottleneck in TB detection, contributing to global initiatives like the UN's EndTB program, which seeks to reduce new TB cases by 90% by 2030. In addition to high burden regions, TBscan's utility extends to established economies, where latent TB carriers exist, and situations like refugee centers or airport security, where rapid pre-screening is imperative to prevent transmission.

Target customers

  • TBscan addresses the pressing need for accurate, rapid TB diagnosis in emerging economy nations, where existing solutions are either inaccurate, slow, or challenging to implement at scale, hindering broad population screening efforts.
  • In established economy nations, TBscan serves as a vital tool for hospitals and healthcare facilities, enabling rapid pre-screening of patients in various settings like waiting rooms, ICUs, and pulmonary clinics, contributing to effective TB control measures.
  • Key customers for TBscan include hospitals in Greece and the EU initially, followed by doctors for private practice. With WHO accreditation, TBscan aims to expand its reach to governments and healthcare organizations in emerging economy nations, while also catering to diverse applications such as refugee centers, airports, and military settings.

TBscan Solution

  • TBscan revolutionizes TB detection by directly analyzing the mycobacterium in exhaled breath, eliminating the need for invasive sputum samples and access to specialized laboratories, thus enabling nearly instant detection without delays.
  • Overcoming technological challenges, TBscan's laser-based optical system distinguishes TB mycobacteria from other airborne entities, ensuring rapid and accurate detection in real-time, even in environments with high concentrations of TB mycobacteria.
  • RespiBit's innovative approach allows TBscan to be implemented across various devices, starting as a handheld breath analysis tool, followed by a desktop version for wider adoption among doctors, and potentially expanding to an air-quality monitoring device in the future with increased detection sensitivity.

TBscan Validation of Technology

The TBscan device was validated as a proof-of-concept in a series of experimental studies conducted at the laser lab of Prof. C. Kosmidis at the Physics Dept. of the Univ. of Ioannina between November 2021 and February 2022. The validation experiments achieved, for the first time, the real-time detection of a TBmb analogue dispersed in fine aerosol droplets which were dispersed in air. A sensitivity analysis established the detection limit for this system.