Diagnosing gastrointestinal illnesses using fecal headspace volatile organic compounds

Figure 1 Quadrupole mass filter schematic: ionized gas enters the quadrupole through a slit and interacts with charged metal poles. Based on mass and charge, different ionized gases successfully pass through a second slit to a detector that measures the mass-to-charge ratio of the ionized gas (solid arrow), while other ionized gases will collide with metal rods and will not reach the detector (dotted line and asterisk).

Figure 2 Example output of the owlstone lonestar field-asymmetric ion mobility spectrometry device of breath volatile spectra of limonene (A) and isoprene (B)-volatile organic compounds associated with lung cancer detection. Courtesy of Owlstone Nanotech, used with permission.

Figure 3 Example output of the eNose company aeonose device identifying aggregate volatile organic compounds signal output from clinical breath analysis using its 3-sensor array spanning a 10-min breath sample.