Scientists say they have created a “smart mask” that can analyze the wearer’s breath and detect telltale signs of illness.
Researchers hope the device — which can beam its data to an app over Bluetooth — will provide an affordable and convenient way to capture and instantly analyze breath biomarkers related to respiratory and metabolic processes.
They say it has the potential to improve efforts to diagnose conditions such as lung disease early and to monitor conditions and support tailored treatment plans.
“Our technology can serve as a common breath analysis platform. We can choose different sensors for a specific condition or a fusion of sensors for a variety of conditions,” said Prof Wei Gao, senior author of the research, from the California Institute of Technology.
“For example, the mask we evaluated in this work can simultaneously monitor kidney conditions as well as airway inflammation in COPD [chronic obstructive pulmonary disease] and asthma.”
In the journal Sciencethe team reports that current methods of analyzing patients’ exhaled breath face challenges around condensing the vapor — often requiring ice buckets or refrigeration — while analyzes of such samples are typically performed in a laboratory.
In contrast, their mask is equipped with a device, called EBCare, which enables the monitoring of biomarkers in a patient’s breath.
The researchers said they used a dual approach to condense breath: not only is the EBCare device made of a material that can easily lose heat, but it 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 breath, including the alcohol content, pH and levels of ammonium and nitrite. The condensed breath is then directed to the hydrogel, providing a continuous source of water for the vaporization process.
The researchers reported several tests of the device among healthy volunteers as well as those with conditions such as asthma and COPD.
Among their results, they found that the mask could detect changes in breath alcohol concentration, and therefore the dynamics of alcohol metabolism, as well as monitor changes in ammonium levels associated with eating protein.
The latter, they said, offers a non-invasive alternative to blood tests for kidney disease management and personalized protein metabolism monitoring. They also found that the concentration of nitrite in the breath was 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 at-home personalized health monitoring without the need for clinical visits,” Gao said.
The device is also cheap, he said: “The reusable electronic part will cost tens of dollars, while the disposable part will cost about $1 per device.”
Prof Ian Hall, from the University of Nottingham, who was not involved in the work, said the device was a nice piece of engineering but that further work was needed to show it could be used to diagnose and monitor conditions .
Hall added that the device could be useful in research. “Often in evaluating a new drug, you want to get early-stage indications of whether your drug is working or not, and many of the endpoints we use take a long time to develop,” he said.
