First Comprehensive Evaluation of the M.I.C. Evaluator Device Compared to Etest and CLSI Reference Dilution Methods for Antimicrobial Susceptibility Testing of Clinical Strains of Anaerobes and Other Fastidious Bacterial Species
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The new M.I.C. Evaluator strip uses test methodology and the recording of results that are similar to those of Etest. For this first assessment, 102 clinical strains of anaerobic bacteria from 12 genera and 155 strains from 7 genera and 8 species of fastidious bacteria were tested by M.I.C. Evaluator, Etest, and agar dilution or broth microdilution as a reference standard. Ampicillin, amoxicillin, amoxicillin-clavulanate, cefotaxime, ciprofloxacin, erythromycin, imipenem, levofloxacin, metronidazole, penicillin, and tetracycline were tested depending on the species. Agar dilution for anaerobes was performed according to CLSI document M11-A7. For the fastidious bacteria, CLSI document M45-A2 was followed. For the anaerobes, essential and categorical agreement between M.I.C. Evaluator and Etest was >90%. Compared to agar dilution, essential agreement was low for both strip tests, and many very major errors were observed for metronidazole (13 to 14%) and penicillin (8 to 9%) with isolates from the Bacteroides fragilis group and Clostridium species. For fastidious species, essential agreements for M.I.C. Evaluator and Etest plus or minus one doubling dilution were >95%. Compared to broth microdilution, essential agreements were low (40 to 90%) plus or minus one dilution and were >90% plus or minus two dilutions, with high overall category agreement (CA). Major and minor errors were within established parameters for all strains tested. The M.I.C. Evaluator strips were equivalent to Etest for anaerobes and fastidious species. These observations require further investigation to determine which methods provide the most accurate MIC for clinical utility. The further evaluation of additional M.I.C. Evaluator agents will be performed as they become available.
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.074 | 0.054 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.003 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.004 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".