AREA 3
Diagnosis of exogens
PI-SENS - Personalized Medicine enabled by Intelligent Sensing Systems
Development of e-Nose devices for smell pattern identification.
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Olfaction, the detection, and discrimination of air-borne chemicals, is probably the most important sense for humans and for most animal species. Localization and identification of food, avoidance of toxins and predators, communication with cohorts and mating partners through volatile organic compounds (VOCs) are all examples of the range of olfaction-dependent behaviors...
Process scheme for artificial neural networks implementation for eNose. The training is performed on a centralized computational unit (top); while the output ANN is implemented for edge computing on the device (bottom), transmitting the results via comparison to a cloud-based database.
The development of technical VOC sensors still requires a much better understanding of the molecular mechanisms of the sense of smell and asks for fundamental research at the intersection of biology, physics, chemistry, materials science, and information technology.
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Large instruments like gas chromatographs coupled with mass spectrometers (GC-MS) allow us to identify essentially any odorant, e.g., in exhaled breath, in the bouquet of a full-bodied wine, in sophisticated perfumes, or in the aroma mix of food;
however, these instruments are expensive, bulky, and not suitable for layman’s use. For a wide variety of applications including those in the cosmetics industry, for food quality control, in the biomedical field, in agriculture, in forensics, and for environmental monitoring small, hand-held technical devices that reach the sensitivity and selectivity of natural olfaction are highly desirable.