A Metal Oxide Gas Sensors Array for Lung Cancer Diagnosis Through Exhaled Breath Analysis

Lung cancer high mortality rate is mainly related to late-stage tumor diagnosis. Survival rates and treatments could be greatly improved with an effective early diagnosis. Volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in exhaled breath have been known for long to be linked to the presence of a disease. Exhaled breath analysis for early diagnosis of lung cancer represents a non-invasive, low-cost and user-friendly approach. In this paper we present the design and development of an electronic nose based on a metal oxide sensors array for the early diagnosis of lung cancer. Breath samples collected from healthy controls (n=10) and lung cancer subjects (n=6) were analyzed by the electronic nose, and classification was performed using an artificial neural network (ANN). A sensitivity of 85.7%, specificity of 100%, and accuracy of 93.8% were reached with leave one out cross validation (LOOCV). The presented device demonstrates that a simple, cost-effective, and non-invasive approach based on exhaled breath analysis has the potential to be of great help in decreasing lung cancer mortality.