Comparison of Vitek MS Prime and sirius MALDI-TOF systems to identify rare or difficult to identify bacteria

The objective of the study was to compare the performance of two MALDI-TOF systems, VITEK® MS PRIME (VMSP, BioMérieux, V3.2.0) and Biotyper® sirius (BS, Bruker, MBT Compass 5.2.220)., in the identification of bacteria, including rare and/or difficult-to-identify species. Whole-genome sequencing (WGS) was used to confirm species assignation. For strains showing non-equivalence between the two systems, short-read-based WGS was performed and taxonomic assignment was done based on Average Nucleotide Identity (ANI) against the GTDB v220 database.