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Efficient and timely testing plays a critical role in disease control and transmission prevention. Group testing is a well-established method for reducing the number of tests needed to screen large populations when the disease prevalence is low. However, it does not fully utilize the quantitative information provided by qPCR methods, nor is it able to accommodate a wide range of pathogen loads.<\/jats:p>\n                  <\/jats:sec>\n                  <jats:sec>\n                    <jats:title>Results<\/jats:title>\n                    <jats:p>\n                      To address these issues, we introduce a novel adaptive semi-quantitative group testing (SQGT) scheme to efficiently screen populations via two-stage qPCR testing. The SQGT method quantizes cycle threshold (\n                      <jats:italic>Ct<\/jats:italic>\n                      ) values into multiple bins, leveraging the information from the first stage of screening to improve the detection sensitivity. Dynamic\n                      <jats:italic>Ct<\/jats:italic>\n                      threshold adjustments mitigate dilution effects and enhance test accuracy. Comparisons with traditional binary outcome GT methods show that SQGT reduces the number of tests by 24% on the only complete real-world qPCR group testing dataset from Israel, while maintaining a negligible false negative rate.\n                    <\/jats:p>\n                  <\/jats:sec>\n                  <jats:sec>\n                    <jats:title>Conclusion<\/jats:title>\n                    <jats:p>In conclusion, our adaptive SQGT approach, utilizing qPCR data and dynamic threshold adjustments, offers a promising solution for efficient population screening. With a reduction in the number of tests and minimal false negatives, SQGT holds potential to enhance disease control and testing strategies on a global scale.<\/jats:p>\n                  <\/jats:sec>","DOI":"10.1186\/s12859-024-05798-3","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2024,5,17]],"date-time":"2024-05-17T07:03:09Z","timestamp":1715929389000},"update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1007\/springer_crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":0,"title":["Semi-quantitative group testing for efficient and accurate qPCR screening of pathogens with a wide range of loads"],"prefix":"10.1186","volume":"25","author":[{"given":"Ananthan","family":"Nambiar","sequence":"first","affiliation":[]},{"given":"Chao","family":"Pan","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[]},{"given":"Vishal","family":"Rana","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[]},{"given":"Mahdi","family":"Cheraghchi","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[]},{"given":"Jo\u00e3o","family":"Ribeiro","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[]},{"given":"Sergei","family":"Maslov","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[]},{"given":"Olgica","family":"Milenkovic","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[]}],"member":"297","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2024,5,17]]},"reference":[{"issue":"10","key":"5798_CR1","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"5111","DOI":"10.1109\/TIT.2010.2059891","volume":"56","author":"S Aeron","year":"2010","unstructured":"Aeron S, Saligrama V, Zhao M. 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The rules and protocols used adhere to the regulations in the countries in which the data was acquired. The data from [\n                      \n                      ] was approved by the Hadassah Medical Center Institutional Review Board with a waiver from the need for informed consent. The anonymized data from [\n                      \n                      ] was cleared under paragraph 25 of the Berlin Landeskrankenhausgesetz.","order":2,"name":"Ethics","group":{"name":"EthicsHeading","label":"Ethics approval and consent to participate"}},{"value":"Not applicable.","order":3,"name":"Ethics","group":{"name":"EthicsHeading","label":"Consent for publication"}},{"value":"The authors declare no conflict of interest.","order":4,"name":"Ethics","group":{"name":"EthicsHeading","label":"Conflict of interest"}}],"article-number":"195"}}