Executive Summary : | Asthma is a complex and major noncommunicable disease which is common both in children and adults. It is a condition in which a person's airways become inflamed, swollen, narrow and produce extra mucus which causes difficulty in breathing. The chronic inflammation has an important role in the development of cancer - a condition which can also lead to lung cancer. Asthma effected 262 million people in 2019 and caused around 4.5 Lakhs deaths. Asthma is generally characterized by exercise induced bronchoconstriction (EIB) or exercise induced bronchospasm. It has a negative effect on health and especially on athletic performance. EIB is a condition wherein the airways in the lungs get narrowed down obstructing the passage of air following a rigorous exercise and this is prevalent in athletes of all levels. It is thus very important to develop a point of care diagnostic device which will non-invasively detect the presence of asthma in the exhaled breath. This proposal aims to develop Electronic nose for a point of care diagnostics for breath printing of healthy vs asthmatic patients. It will be based on detection of gases/VOCs present in the breath which will interact with the sensor array in the electronic nose resulting a change in the resistance of the sensors. The breath sampling will be done through a micro GC column. The target is to develop a complete system starting from breath sampling to readout circuit. This will be extremely useful for asthmatic people who are in the athletes or in the army. The target gases will be nitric oxide (FeNO test) and volatile organic compounds (VOCs) based biomarkers mapped to asthma. E-nose is an artificial olfactory sensor which can indicate a health condition of a human being based on exhaled breath, urine samples or even blood samples. A typical E-nose consists of the following elements: Breath sample collector, micro-gas chromatography (GC) column, sensor array, signal processing and readout. This proposal aims to design and develop micro GC column structure and gas sensor array. The micro-GC structure will be made in silicon using lithography and etching. These columns will help in breath sampling and separating the gases as the gases travel through the columns based on their mass. These will then interact with sensor array. The array will comprise of different sensors responding to vapors/gases selectively. The data acquired will be processed using data analytics. The vapors/gases of interest will be separated using signal processing and the system will be trained with the data sets received from the array with the help of AI algorithms. Thus the project is inter-disciplinary in nature and the team members are also from diverse backgrounds who will together work to develop the intelligent system which will be able to distinctively identify asthmatic patients from a group of patients. |
Co-PI: | Prof. Kamaljit Rangra, Indian Institute Of Technology Jodhpur (IITJ), Rajasthan-342030; Prof. Monika Aggarwal, Indian Institute Of Technology (IIT) Delhi-110016; Dr. Nishant Kumar Chauhan, All India Institute Of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) Jodhpur, Rajasthan-342005; Dr. Jaspreet Singh, Semi-Conductor Laboratory, Ajitgarh, Punjab -160071 |