Preliminary Experiment Results on Dog Breath Analysis Using the MEMS Micropreconcentrator

Abstract

Breath analysis has been paid attention as a tool of disease diagnosis due to lots of advantages. Especially, recently, it has been reported that various cancer can be diagnosed by the biomarkers of volatile organic compound (VOC) gases contained in exhaled breath. To diagnose cancer early and exactly by the breath analysis, it is necessary to detect trace level VOC gas biomarkers. To do so, a MEMS based micropreconcentrator is considered as a useful and powerful device. It concentrates trace level VOC gases up to the concentration to be able to detect by conventional equipment such as gas chromatography. However, those studies are focused on human breath. In this study, we apply breath analysis using a MEMS based micropreconcentrator to dog cancer diagnosis. In case of dogs, the biggest cause of death among diseases is the cancer like human. To clarify the possibility of breath analysis based dog’s cancer diagnosis, we performed breath analysis experiment for an experimental dog. For the experiment, we fabricated the MEMS based micropreconcentrator, and developed the breath capture method for the dog. As a result, we could achieve VOC gas components analysis from the breath of the experimental dog. We can conclude that the breath analysis based on proposed micropreconcentrator and apparatus for capturing of dog breath could be a new method to diagnose dog diseases.