A team of scientists recently developed an electronic nose that detects Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis. Continue reading below, or follow the original story to learn more about this intriguing invention.
Detecting and diagnosing rare disease can be a difficult process. Sometimes there are few cases to draw accurate information from. Other times, symptoms are similar to more common illnesses. In still more cases the process of diagnosis can involve complicated and invasive procedures. That final category may, however, soon disappear.
Moosy 32 eNose is a new technology that can detect colon disease. What’s better is it can detect disease without entering a patient’s body. Perhaps even more impressive is its ability to tell multiple disease apart form each other. The Moosy nose can, for example, tell you whether a person suffers from ulcerative colitis or Crohn’s disease.
The Moosy nose has been scored with 90% accuracy when tested.
In current medical science, it is often necessary to perform invasive procedures to diagnose inflammatory bowel disease. Were the Moosy 32 eNose to become available to specialists, such procedures would become a thing of the past. All that the nose requires to work out an answer is a basic stool analysis. According to researchers from Valencia’s Polytechnic University in Spain the whole process would take about three minutes.
The electronic nose sounds a bit like magic. It quickens the diagnosis process and it cuts down on uncomfortable medical visits.
Plus its called an electronic nose – a name equally simple and fantastic. How it functions though is by a process of detecting “volatile organic compounds.” The compounds the nose searches for are created naturally in the human body. The necessary organic compounds are a result of the metabolic process. The body naturally expels them as waste. These compounds then act as diagnostic red flags. The electronic nose can use them to reveal the type or intensity of disease a patient suffers from.
Depending on the concentrations and presence of unique compounds, the electronic nose can be used to pinpoint a diagnosis, and continue to monitor the development of a patient’s condition.
Researchers have now tested the Moosy 32 eNose across nearly 450 samples. Results are consistently positive. Even so, the electronic nose is not quite ready for its world debut. Tests continue to tighten up its algorithms and insure accuracy.
Other groups are beginning to test the limits of the electronic nose’s capabilities. The nose is being put through its paces in attempts to detect prostate cancer, identifying contaminants in water, and determining the how mature fruit is. Hopefully research will continue and the developments will continue to sniff out new and amazing answers.
