BIONOTE e-nose technology may reduce false positives in lung cancer screening programmes†

Area of Science:

• Biomedical Engineering
• Analytical Chemistry
• Respiratory Medicine

Background:

• Breath analysis can reveal physiological states and diseases.
• Electronic-nose (e-nose) technology profiles volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in breath.
• Biosensor-based multisensorial system for mimicking NOse, Tongue and Eyes (BIONOTE) is an e-nose technology.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the discriminating ability of BIONOTE technology.
• To assess BIONOTE's utility in a high-risk lung cancer screening population.
• To evaluate BIONOTE as a complementary tool for lung cancer screening.

Main Methods:

• One hundred high-risk individuals were enrolled in a lung cancer screening program.
• Exhaled breath was collected using the Pneumopipe device and analyzed by BIONOTE.
• Partial Least Square (PLS) modeling with Leave-One-Out cross-validation was employed for analysis.

Main Results:

• The BIONOTE system demonstrated high diagnostic performance.
• Overall sensitivity was 86% and specificity was 95% in distinguishing patients from healthy individuals.
• A substantial difference in breath VOC patterns was observed between the groups.

Conclusions:

• BIONOTE technology shows promise in reducing false-positive rates in lung cancer screening.
• The cost-effectiveness of breath analysis using BIONOTE is highlighted (€10 per analysis).
• Further validation in larger patient cohorts is planned to confirm reliability.