A cohort of 92 total urine samples have been run through a
newly-built electronic nose, the ‘WOLF′, based on state-of-the-art
sensors and control hardware being driven by custom LabVIEW
software interface. This new system was successfully tested to
prove the sensitivity of the sensors to common volatile organic
groups. LDA plots produced from the WOLF urine data show a
reasonable separation of all three groups included in this study,
although there is a degree of inter-group overlapping due to a
significant number of outliers. However, particularly well-clus-
tered groups are shown when distinguishing colorectal cancer
from irritable bowel syndrome. Re-classification of single un-
known samples into this latter case produced 78% sensitivity and
79% specificity for detecting CRC, which accurately represents a
situation requiring this new diagnostic tool within the clinical
setting. These results are comparable to those produced clinically
from current techniques, with a potential increase in sensitivity
using a test that only requires 10 min to complete and is practical
within a primary care environment.
These results have highlighted the need for further work, in-
cluding a comparison of different subsets of IBS samples to see if
better-defined groups can be obtained. Another interesting future
study would be to follow-up on patients whose samples were at
the barrier between groups, to see if any disease progression can
be marked using this method. Regardless of the need for future
work, this investigation has strengthened the case for the potential
of electronic nose technologies to be used as diagnostic tools to
detect colorectal cancer from both another common disease and
healthy controls.