A Sensor Sniffs for Cancer, Using Artificial Intelligence

Researchers at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK) have developed a sensor that can be trained to sniff for cancer, with the help of artificial intelligence. Although the training doesn't work the same way one trains a police dog to sniff for explosives or drugs, the sensor has some similarity to how the nose works. The nose can detect more than a trillion different scents, even though it has just a few hundred types of olfactory receptors. The pattern of which odor molecules bind to which receptors creates a kind of molecular signature that the brain uses to recognize a scent. Like the nose, the cancer detection technology uses an array of multiple sensors to detect a molecular signature of the disease.