Analyze Exhaled Gas of COPD Patients ( II )

In this project, we proposed a simple hand-held electronic nose system for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) early detection and long-term home-cared monitoring. We plan to realize through two ways simultaneously: clinical experiments and engineering works. In clinical way, we construct the database of COPD patient corresponding to their compounds of patient’s breath. In engineering way, we integrate the microsensors, signal acquisition circuits, signal processing circuits into a System-on-Chip (SoC). Based on this SoC, we would develop a hand-held electronic nose prototype. Finally, this electronic nose prototype would be verified and estimated the performance by clinical test for COPD. To realize the proposal, we build the database by collecting breath samples from patients and analyze the samples by GC-MS at the same time. For sensing the low concentration gas, we would develop the mesoporous carbon-based sensing materials to replace the commercial carbon black, to increase the sensitivity and selectivity. The design of SoC focuses the low power consumption circuits and embedded neuromophic algorithm for COPD identification. In addition, the chip has the feature of scalability. To include more SoCs into the electronic nose system, the sensing ability, processing ability and neuromophic network could be enforced for well COPD identification. In addition, we include the integrated temperature and humility sensors to perform a compensated algorithm to calibrate the variation between different patients.