Table 2.

Comparison of nucleic acid-based cancer screening techniques.

Technique	Throughput	Specificity	Sensitivity	Cost/miR [84]	Assay Time
Microarray	High	Moderate	Low	Low	1–2 days
qRT-PCR	Low	High	High	High	Few hours
Next generation sequencing	High	High	High	Low (High/sample)	2–5 days

qRT-PCR: quantitative reverse transcription-PCR; miR: microRNA.