Detection and quantification in real-time polymerase chain reaction

The estimation of the concentration of an infectious agent in the environment is a key step to trigger an alert when there is a biological threat. This concentration can be obtained trough a quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR). Nevertheless, standard real-time procedure do not address detection delay which is a main concern in alert triggering. Therefore, we propose a method based on Lasso regression and CUSUM change detection to accurately estimate the concentration while minimizing the detection delay. The trade-off between accuracy and delay can be managed through a parameter. We compare our results with those found by a standard method (threshold method) and promising results are obtained.