Robot Nose: A Tool to Detect Undiagnosed Diseases

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According to a group of scientists in Hangzhou, China, a robot's nose may soon be able to smell hidden diseases simply by "sniffing" a patient's breath, as an international team is working on new techniques to analyze chemical compounds in a person's breath, sweat and tears, knowing that these chemicals act as “fingerprints” of thousands of diseases.

How Does It Work?

To begin with, let us explain a simple concept about smelling; when someone smells perfume or any other smell, their nose emits VOCs that have a low boiling point and evaporate very easily which is why they are “volatile”. It is also worth noting that all parts of the human body release volatile organic compounds whether we know it or not to perform various tasks; communication, defense, and more. Scientists have observed that our bodies release VOCs episodically in response to biological changes - such as disease and that the release of these compounds is unique to each biological process, creating a VOC fingerprint that links them to specific diseases.

From Greek and Chinese Medicine to the Twenty-first Century

The concept of sniffing someone's breath to find disease actually dates back to the ancient Greek physician Hippocrates, and ancient Chinese physician Bian Que, researchers say. Today, technology has allowed scientists to identify thousands of signatures of VOCs over the past five decades. Machine learning and artificial intelligence technology also allow scientists to use all this data.

Meanwhile, nanomaterial sensors such as "eNose" can accurately identify fingerprints of VOCs coming from foods, drinks, pollution, and people.

For clinicians, this technology creates a way to find diseases in their early stages of development. For diseases such as cancer, this is critical, as it is much easier to treat cancer before it spreads throughout the body.

The authors hope that researchers will be able to fill in all the gaps related to the use of this technology before this technology becomes a reality.

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