A device for self-monitoring breath analysis

Let's think about the numerous diagnostic screening methods. How many of them are invasive? How many of them present side effects? How many of them are expensive? We can affirm that the majority of the regular prophylactic checkups are sufficiently invasive, expensive and, sometimes, painful to discourage the subjects from participating in preemptive diagnostic procedures. As a consequence, in recent years, the need for the development of low cost, non invasive, rapid tools for the monitoring of metabolic processes has been increased. Breath analysis, performed by means of gas sensor array, may be an example of this kind of tools. In this paper, we will present the development of a portable, low cost, easy to use device for breath analysis, based on commercial semiconductor-based gas sensor array. We will describe its design, both from a hardware and software point of view. In addition, by describing the functionality tests of the device and the experimental results, we will highlight the pros and cons that come from the use of such type of low cost adopted technology to analyze breath molecules