Clinical diagnostics

News and Updates

Illustration shows a breathalyzer device with a paper report and microscope slides.

NIST Partners With the Gates Foundation to Develop Breathalyzers for Malaria and Tuberculosis

June 26, 2024

NIST will create the standards and tools needed to ensure that the breathalyzers work.

Tiny red cylinder probes are presented in front of a much larger ice cube.

Spotlight: Shape-Shifting Probes Will Help Improve MRI Imaging

April 12, 2024

Not all gems are the precious stone kind. In the field of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), a type of microscopic magnetic probes called geometrically encoded

NIST Researchers Use Cellphone Compass to Measure Tiny Concentrations of Compounds Important for Human Health

April 1, 2024

Nearly every modern cellphone has a built-in compass, or magnetometer, that detects the direction of Earth’s magnetic field, providing critical information for

Projects and Programs

Trusted AI framework for a new class of Standard Reference Materials and Data with exquisitely characterized uncertainty for billions of properties

Ongoing

The measurement of diverse molecular classes in biospecimens containing millions of molecules, known as omics, is increasingly important in the life sciences and medicine, and used to find novel cancer therapeutics, discover COVID-19 infection pathways, and diagnose diseases. NIST RMs and SRDs for

Genome in a Bottle

Ongoing

Consortium goals: The Genome in a Bottle Consortium is a public-private-academic consortium hosted by NIST to develop the technical infrastructure (reference standards, reference methods, and reference data) to enable translation of whole human genome sequencing to clinical practice and innovations

Computer-generated image of the structure for C-reactive protein

Development of a Reference Measurement Procedure for C-Reactive Protein in Human Serum

Completed

Two basic types of CRP tests are commonly employed in clinical laboratories. The hsCRP test has improved sensitivity and is better suited to screening of apparently healthy individuals for potential heart disease risk. Current hsCRP tests have been standardized to ERM/IFCC DA-470, a certified

Digital PCR

Ongoing

With appropriately validated assays, digital polymerase chain reaction (dPCR) determines the number of DNA targets (copies) per reaction partition, without the need for a standard curve. Reaction partitions can be in the form of fixed chambers in a microfluidic device, referred to as chamber digital

Publications

Bilirubin measurements in neonates: uniform neonatal treatment can only be achieved by improved standardization

July 26, 2024

Author(s)

Christian Hulzebos, Johanna Camara, Miranda van Berkel, VINCENT DELATOUR, Stanley Lo, Agnes Mailloux, Marcel Schmidt, Mercy Thomas, Lindsey Mackay, Ronda Greaves

Measurement of total serum bilirubin (TSB) concentration is the gold standard approach for diagnosing neonatal unconjugated hyperbilirubinemia. It is of utmost

Reference Measurement Procedure for the Absolute Quantification of Albumin in Urine Using Isotope Dilution-Liquid Chromatography-Tandem Mass Spectrometry (ID-LC-MS/MS)

May 21, 2024

Author(s)

Ashley Beasley Green, N. Alan Heckert

Urinary excretion of albumin is a major diagnostic and prognostic marker of kidney disease; therefore, accurate measurement of urine albumin is essential to

Ensuring accuracy in the development and application of nucleic acid amplification tests (NAATs) for infectious disease

May 20, 2024

Author(s)

Jim Huggett, Denise O'Sullivan, Simon Cowen, Megan Cleveland, Jacob Moran-Gilad, Amanda Winter, Michael Messenger, Julian Braybrook

Diagnostic tests were heralded as crucial during the COVID-19 pandemic with most of the key methods using bioanalytical approaches. Bioanalytical techniques can

Quantitative, high-sensitivity measurement of liquid analytes using a smartphone compass

April 2, 2024

Author(s)

Mark Ferris, Gary Zabow

Smartphone ubiquity has led to rapid developments in portable diagnostics. While successful, such platforms are predominantly optics-based, using the smartphone

Software

NIST's Integrated Colony Enumerator (NICE)

January 4, 2021

Enumeration of bacterial colonies on an agar plate is simple in concept, but automated colony counting is difficult due to variations in colony color, size

Curated Archive for COVID-19 Research Challenge Dataset (cord19-cdcs-nist)

This GitHub repository contains a downloadable snapshot of National Institute of Standards and Technology's COVID-19 Data Repository, curated from the COVID-19