Serum and urine headspace using electronic nose (e-nose) technology

摘要

For the last 20 years, several applications of electronic nose (e-nose) havebeen reported in the area of microbiology, environmental and agriculturalmonitoring or medical diagnosis. E-noses were used to detect contaminantsor for quality control. However, little has been reported about complexmethodological problems which are strongly linked to the e-noseperformance.This thesis summarises various e-nose systems and alternatives for gas andheadspace analysis, highlights the essential problems associated with e-noseanalysis and explains why these devices have a potential for the detection oftrace gas molecules but also why a stable and reliable analysis is not possibleyet. Methodological weaknesses such as changes in mass flow rates, filterapplication or sampling methods are addressed. Understanding theseenables analysis of serum and urine samples from cattle or badgers eithernaturally or experimentally infected with the zoonotic diseases caused byMycoplasma bovis, Mannheimia haemolytica A1, Mycobacterium bovis,Mycobacterium avium ssp. paraTuberculosis and Brucella sp. Thecircumstances under which meaningful results can be obtained using theST214 e-nose (Scensive Tech. Ltd., UK) are assessed which show thecurrent limitations for discriminating between samples. Alternative methods foranalysing e-nose data are mentioned and reasons are given why under thestated circumstances no straightforward multivariate statistics is possible.However, despite various difficulties, meaningful results at a group level wereobtained and could be correlated with other results obtained using alternativeanalytical methods. This indicates the positive proof-of-principle character ofthis project.