Colorado physicists unveil groundbreaking breath sensor for disease detection – 9News.com KUSA
To stream 9NEWS on your phone, you need the 9NEWS app.Next up in 5Example video title will go here for this videoNext up in 5Example video title will go here for this videoBOULDER, Colo. — Physicists at the University of Colorado and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) said they created a device that could help researchers diagnose illnesses from human breath.On Friday, Qizhong Liang, lead author of the study and a doctoral student at JILA, the research institute in Boulder, spoke to 9NEWS about the device. “In front of you is the world’s, like the newest, world’s most powerful gas sensor ever built,” said Liang. The team named the new technology Modulated Ringdown Comb Interferometry, or MRCI (pronounced “mercy”).Liang said the laser is powerful enough to identify a variety of molecules in a breath sample.”By looking at this fingerprint information that allows us to figure out whether this is a molecule like carbon dioxide or like some other exotic molecule like nitric oxide or it’s even a virus,” said Liang. Liang said they collaborated with researchers at CU Anschutz Medical Campus and Children’s Hospital Colorado to use MRCI to analyze a range of breath samples. He said they are examining whether MRCI can distinguish samples taken from children with pneumonia from those taken from children with asthma.”Whether or not that can be used to facilitate early detection of a disease like COPD, the leading cause of death and many others like lung cancer,” he said.On Friday, Liang said they used a similar device during the pandemic. “It’s not as capable as the one you are seeing over here, but at the time we were using the gas sensor to carry out the first experiment of using our technique to see how well we can do COVID-19 detection,” Liang said. “From those results, we found early evidence of 85% accuracy in detecting COVID-19.”Liang hoped the success of this device would help more people catch their illnesses early. “We want to take this even further,” he said. Liang said the goal is to make the device smaller, which would allow it to be more accessible. “That will really be able to bring that technology into our daily lives and to allow everyone to enjoy the measurement of the gas sensor,” said Liang.
