Imagine talking to your best friend on the phone, when suddenly a text message from your doctor pops up. A plug-in module on your smartphone has detected an unusual chemical pattern in your breath, and you need to come in to be evaluated for early signs of cancer.
Physicians have been detecting disease from the
smell of breath, urine, and feces for over 2,000 years. Illness can change the metabolism in our bodies, causing our cells to release volatile organic compounds (VOCs), molecules that travel through the bloodstream to the lungs and are exhaled. People with early stage cancer, for example, breathe out different concentrations of VOCs than healthy individuals.
In dozens of studies, scientists have detected VOCs in the breath of patients using laboratory techniques like gas chromatography and mass spectroscopy. Now, a team of researchers, led by engineer
Hossam Haick of the Technion−Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa, reports its latest advances with a simpler, more sophisticated method for detecting disease in the breath. Called the “Na-Nose,” this artificially intelligent nanoarray relies on gold nanoparticles and carbon nanotubes to diagnose and classify 17 different diseases based on a single human breath.
