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It’s no secret that artificial intelligence (AI) is now able to see, as in drive cars for us, and listen, as in the way these virtual assistants interact with us. From now on, it seems that AI will also be able to smell, but not in the way you think. A team of researchers is planning to develop an AI system that will be capable of detecting various illnesses by smelling human breath. The concept is not new, as animals and some plants use it to identify various substances in the air and detect danger. But when it comes to humans, our sense of smell is far less advanced that that of animals.
For decades, certain laboratories from all over the world have used machines to detect even the smallest amounts of substances in the air. The GC-MS machines separate each compound in an air sample and analyze it to discover a large number of molecules called volatile organic compounds. This machine also creates fingerprints from which you can recognize each compound. Observing even the smallest peaks in these fingerprints can be crucial in detecting even the most dangerous illnesses, like cancers. All in the human breath.
AI might soon be able to detect illnesses
The only problem with these machines is that the entire process can take a lot of time. Experts need to manually analyze and detect every compound in these samples. Apart from this, humans can make mistakes, hence the idea about artificial intelligence.
The idea is to make the most advanced AI technology lean and perceive these chemical compounds in human breath samples. The human brain has inspired mathematical models which can pick up traces of odors and then analyze them. As part of an experiment, experts manually analyzed breath samples form cancer patients. Then, fast computers needed to train deep learning networks to do the same thing. The main focus now would be to make sure that AI can recognize markers of certain diseases. With this out of the way, they can then detect whether or not we are actually ill.
Image source: pixabay
