AI System Can Sniff Out Disease as Well as Dogs Do

Most people consider smell their least important sense, surveys suggest. Dogs, however, feel their way through the world with their noses. Humans already employ the animals' olfactory acuity for contraband and explosives detection. More recently it has also proved uncannily good at sensing cancers, diabetes--and even COVID-19. Exactly how dogs detect diseases is a mystery, but that has not stopped researchers from mimicking this prowess with an artificial-intelligence-based noninvasive diagnostic tool.