Numerous studies have shown that trained dogs can detect many kinds of disease -- including lung, breast, ovarian, bladder, and prostate cancers, and possibly Covid-19 -- simply through smell. In some cases, involving prostate cancer for example, the dogs had a 99 percent success rate in detecting the disease by sniffing patients' urine samples. But it takes time to train such dogs, and their availability and time is limited. Scientists have been hunting for ways of automating the amazing olfactory capabilities of the canine nose and brain, in a compact device. Now, a team of researchers at MIT and other institutions has come up with a system that can detect the chemical and microbial content of an air sample with even greater sensitivity than a dog's nose.

Andreas Mershin visits with one of the trained disease-sniffing dogs in his office at MIT. The dogs are trained and handled in the UK by the organization Medical Detection Dogs. Trained dogs can detect cancer and other diseases by smell. A miniaturized detector can analyze trace molecules to mimic the process. Numerous studies have shown that trained dogs can detect many kinds of disease -- including lung, breast, ovarian, bladder, and prostate cancers, and possibly Covid-19 -- simply through smell.

Dogs that can smell prostate cancer could inspire'robotic noses' to sniff out the disease, in a technique dubbed'machine olfaction', a new study reveals. In a pilot study, British and US researchers trained dogs to detect aggressive prostate cancer from people's urine samples. Dogs have an extremely sensitive sense of smell and can pick up on'volatile organic compounds' (VOCs) released during the early stages of many cancers. The scientists then used the data to create an artificial neural network that could detect the cancer-specific chemicals that the dogs could smell. The hope is that the dogs' performance can eventually be replicated and used in technology such as an app on a smartphone.