Scientists say they have developed a ‘smart mask’ that can analyse the wearer’s breath and detect signs of illness.
Researchers hope the device – which can send its data to an app via Bluetooth – will provide an affordable and easy way to capture and immediately analyze breath biomarkers related to respiratory and metabolic processes.
They say it could improve efforts to diagnose conditions such as lung diseases early, better monitor the conditions and support tailored treatment plans.
“Our technology can serve as a general platform for breath analysis. We can choose different sensors for a specific condition or a fusion of sensors for different conditions,” said Prof Wei Gao, senior author of the study, from the California Institute of Technology.
“For example, the mask we evaluated in this work can simultaneously monitor kidney disease and airway inflammation in COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease) and asthma.”
In the journal ScienceThe team reports that current methods for analyzing patients’ exhaled breath have problems with condensing the vapor, often requiring ice buckets or refrigeration. However, such samples are typically analyzed in a laboratory.
Their mask, on the other hand, is equipped with a device called EBCare that can monitor biomarkers in a patient’s breath.
The researchers said they used a two-pronged approach to condense the breath: The EBCare device is not only made of a material that easily loses heat, but it also contains a hydrogel that is cooled by the natural evaporation of water.
The condensed breath is directed to a built-in sensor that can detect the presence and levels of various components in the breath, including alcohol content, pH, and levels of ammonium and nitrite. The condensed breath is then directed to the hydrogel, which provides a continuous water source for the evaporation process.
The researchers reported on several tests of the device in healthy volunteers and in volunteers with conditions such as asthma and COPD.
Their results showed, among other things, that the mask could register changes in breath alcohol concentration, and thus the dynamics of alcohol metabolism. They could also register changes in the amount of ammonium that were related to eating protein.
The latter, they said, offered a noninvasive alternative to blood tests for kidney disease management and personalized protein metabolism monitoring. They also found that breath nitrite concentrations were higher in groups with airway inflammation, such as those with asthma.
“This (mask) can be worn during a person’s daily activities – day and night. It provides continuous, real-time and personalized home health monitoring without the need for clinic visits,” Gao said.
The device is also inexpensive, he said: “The reusable electronic part costs tens of dollars, while the disposable part costs about $1 per device.”
Professor Ian Hall from the University of Nottingham, who was not involved in the research, said the device was a neat piece of engineering but more research was needed to show it could be used to diagnose and monitor conditions.
Hall added that the device could be useful in research. “Often when you’re evaluating a new drug, you want to get early indications of whether your drug is working, and many of the endpoints we use take a long time to develop,” he said.