Hundreds of academic studies published over the past two decades have explored how breath can be used to detect diseases, including various types of cancer.
Many approaches focus on capturing a person’s breath and sending it to an expensive gas chromatograph in a laboratory for analysis. DrNose is different: it has built a low-cost, non-invasive device intended for self-use that can provide early-stage screening for multiple cancers and other chronic diseases in real time.
Two factors form the “secret sauce” of DrNose.
1. The combination of sensors
People with certain diseases breathe out a variety of complex gaseous molecules. Dogs can smell these because their noses have around 300 million receptors. Humans are less sensitive, but they still have around six million receptors. DrNose is designed to screen for multiple diseases using just six sensors.
What makes DrNose unique is knowing exactly which six sensors, in combination, are most effective for recognising the presence of a disease and differentiating one from another.
2. Multiple patented AI algorithms
AI traditionally involves using very large quantities of data—tens or hundreds of thousands of data points—to extract patterns that can support a diagnostic decision. In reality, clinical trials tend to be small, with only tens or, at best, a few hundred data points available.
DrNose can work with datasets as small as 30 because its AI is based on “Intuitive AI”, a proven technology developed by its parent company, iOmniscient. It is designed to achieve accurate results even with very small datasets.
Using Intuitive AI and information from the six sensors, DrNose can generate a pattern indicating what a person may be suffering from.
This smell-based technology has been deployed for more than 20 years in industrial applications by iOmniscient and has demonstrated robustness and reliability. Two clinical trials for breast cancer in Israel and lung cancer in Australia demonstrated highly accurate results.
This is intended as a preventive screening tool. By detecting diseases early, treatment may be less aggressive, giving patients the opportunity to receive care sooner and recover faster.
Learn more at DrNose.ai.