A. GARTH RAND, JIANMING YE, CHRIS W. BROWN,

STEPHEN V. LETCHER

The use of optical fibers as the standard means for the transmission of information is well known. However, less well known is the fact that propagation of light through a fiber or waveguide can be very sensitive to the surroundings, making optical fibers excellent detectors for a variety of applications in foods (Swatland, 1992). Optical technology has developed to the point where biosensors can be created that can detect contaminants in foods, particularly pathogens, with speed that greatly ex…

Fig. 2—Fiber-optic evanescent-wave immunosensor. From Golden et al.(1992)

Fig. 3—Salmonella detection with fiber-optic tips. From Zhou et al. (1997)

Fig. 4—Acoustic positioning detection of Salmonella with microspheres.From Zhou et al. (1998)Fig. 6—Detection of Salmonella typhimurium with the immunomagnetic focusing biosensor. From Pivarnik et al. (1999)

Fig. 5—Magnetically focused microspheres

Fig. 7—Surface-enhanced infrared absorption (SEIRA) spectroscopy. From Brown et al. (1998)

Fig. 8—SEIRA spectra of anti-Salmonella antibody with and without Salmonella. From Brown et al. (1998)

Fig. 10—Detection of Staphylococcus aureus with the membrane biosensor in buffer, food extracts, and food extracts with other bacteria. From Ye et al. (1999)

Table 1—Comparison of pathogen assay methods by time for detection

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