A research team using tunable luminescent nanocrystals as tags to advance medical and security imaging have successfully applied them to high-speed scanning technology and detected multiple viruses within minutes.

The research, led by Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia and Purdue University, builds on the team’s earlier success in developing a way to control the length of time light from a luminescent nanocrystal lingers, which introduced the dimension of time in addition to color and brightness in optical detection technology.

The technology could enable screens that identify thousands of different target molecules simultaneously, said J. Paul Robinson, the Professor of Cytomics in Purdue’s College of Veterinary Medicine and professor in Purdue’s Weldon School of Biomedical Engineering, who was involved in the research.

“This is the second part of the puzzle,” said Robinson, who led the biological testing of the technology. “Now we’ve successfully measured the lifetimes of these tags on the fly at thousands of samples per second. The next step is to perform such high-throughput testing within a liquid, like water, blood or urine. That will open the door to widespread biological use and clinical applications, as well as the detection of pathogens in food or water.”