Machine Vision Enabled Lateral Flow Immunoassay Using Functionalized Gold Nanoparticles for Point-of-Care Cardiac Biomarker Detection

Abstract

Acute myocardial infarction (AMI) remains one of the most prevalent and fatal cardiovascular disease. Given the critical diagnostic significance of cardiac troponin I (cTnI) and myoglobin (Myo) in AMI, there is an urgent clinical demand for rapid and accurate detection methods to improve patient outcomes and reduce mortality. To meet this need, we developed a sensing platform that integrates functionalized gold nanoparticle-based lateral flow immunoassay (AuNPs-LFIA) with a machine vision model, enabling rapid quantitative detection of cTnI and Myo. By covalently conjugating antibodies to gold nanoparticles (AuNPs@Ab), we achieved greater probe specificity and stability. The integration of machine vision algorithms allowed quantitative readouts within 8 minutes, a 46.7% improvement of the detection time compared to conventional methods (15 minutes). The platform achieved limits of detection of 0.224 ng/mL for Myo and 0.071 ng/mL for cTnI, with excellent correlation to commercial kits (R2 > 0.99). Overall, these results demonstrate that machine vision-enhanced AuNPs-LFIA offers an efficient, sensitive and reliable strategy for point-of- care testing (POCT) in cardiovascular diagnostics, particularly in resource-limited settings.