We study practically efficient methods for performing combinatorial group
testing. We present efficient non-adaptive and two-stage combinatorial group
testing algorithms, which identify the at most d items out of a given set of n
items that are defective, using fewer tests for all practical set sizes. For
example, our two-stage algorithm matches the information theoretic lower bound
for the number of tests in a combinatorial group testing regimen.Comment: 18 pages; an abbreviated version of this paper is to appear at the
9th Worksh. Algorithms and Data Structure