GC-IMS in Medicine: Transforming Diagnostics with Sensitivity and Speed

Rapid, nondestructive, high-throughput volatile constituent screening and detection is becoming more and more crucial in the medical field's illness analysis. GC-IMS, or gas chromatography-ion mobility spectrometry, is a potent method for the sensitive identification and separation of volatile organic molecules. GC-IMS enables rapid detection with high sensitivity, allowing for the identification of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in a short time, making it particularly suitable for rapid screening and on-site analysis. This technique is user-friendly, requiring no complex sample preparation and enabling direct analysis, thereby streamlining the workflow and reducing time costs. Moreover, the equipment is portable and has low maintenance costs, offering significant potential for widespread application. The operating idea of GC-IMS is briefly explained in this study, along with recent research that has used GC-IMS on various human metabolites, such as urine, feces, bile, serum, and exhaled breath, for purposes like disease and pathogenic microbe differential detection. Lastly, a summary and recommendation are made on the future development direction of GC-IMS.