THE ELECTRONIC NOSE ANALYSIS OF BREATH AS POTENTIAL DIAGNOSTIC TOOL: THE CASE OF LUNG CANCER

摘要

Previous finding shown that the composition of the breath of patients affected by lung cancer contains information that could be used to detect the disease and its development. These volatiles are mainly alkanes and aromatic compounds. Sensor arrays technology (electronic nose) proved to be useful to screen samples characterised by different headspace composition. Here we investigated the possibility of using an electronic nose to check whether volatile compounds present in expired air may diagnostic lung cancer. Results obtained in measurements performed on a number of volunteers, recruited at the Forlanini hospital in Rome, shown that the alteration of breath composition induced by the presence of lung cancer was enough to allow a complete identification of the sample of diseased individuals.