2018-6-8  

NTHU and TMU cooperate to develop electrical nose testing lung cancer only by breathing

Only need a few minutes, we can know whether we get lung cancer or not by electric nose.

Prof. Kea Tiong Tang’s group in the department of electrical engineering in NTHU invent the electric nose by AI technology. We only need to breath out and then the electric nose will rapid screen. It were exhibited in Computex Taipei and caught eyes.

MOST helps fifteen universities to build alliances.

Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST) cooperates with fifteen national universities to establish Gloria alliance and plans to invest the project with fourteen billion NTD within four years and assists domestic universities to cooperate with world-class enterprises. In the last year, MOST totally gave fifteen universities subsidy. In this year, total eleven world-class enterprises including IBM, Kneron, Quanta, ASE, Microsoft and Chirogate International Inc have joined in cooperation and plan to challenge the world.

The secretary of MOST, Liang-gee Chen, stated that both the corporations and researching groups had presented many technologies combined with medical treatment and domiciliary care and also many researches were related to robots including AI and Autonomous applications. Furthermore, influenced by Gloria, academics also follow the industrial trend. For example, NCTU provides the services of chip design, chip implementation and fostering talent to Kneron. NCHU provides the latest technology of biopharmaceutical products to Chirogate International Inc and also build the branches in North America.

The research about AI electrical nose studied by the group coming from NTHU and TMU is also compelling. Lung cancer have been in the third place of the ten main death factors in Taiwan in 2016. In addition, it is also within ten places every year. In the past, testing lung cancer costs a large amount of time. To learn that whether the patients suffer from lung cancer and pneumonia, in the past people had to inspect the patients with computed tomography and X-ray inspection, and also had to foster the bacteria from the patients. To solve this problem, prof. Kea-Tiong Tang, teaching in the department of electrical engineering in NTHU, cooperated with prof. Shih, C. H, teaching in TMU, developed AI breath monitor where the electrical nose chip is implanted. With this device, breathing can be monitored.

Learn the result within three to five minutes

Hsuan-He Wang, instructed by prof. Tang, explained that the breath blown by lung cancer patients is different from the one blown by normal people. Tested by electrical nose, the content of the patients’ breath can be discerned and then we can find out people suffering from lung cancer and also reduce the test time. Furthermore, the patients have more chance to be treated early.

Li-Ying Chen, a student, said that after users blow to the air bag, the machine will analyzes the ingredients of the breath and this procedure only takes three to five minutes. This system now is in the clinical trial. The sensor array of electrical nose is composed of polymer sensor made by eight to nine different material. When different scent molecular is caught by the sensor, we can collect the data and compare the data with the database.