Principal Investigator: Associate Professor Lee Chengkuo

We propose an Infrared Nano-Opto-Surface-Enhanced-Sensor (IR-NOSES) system to detect volatile organic compound (VOC) gases as a measure for early-stage diagnosis and daily personal healthcare. VOCs as breath metabolites or skin secretions correlate with many organs like lung, liver, kidney as well as diseases like cancers, diabetes, gastrointestinal disease, and Alzheimer’s disease. In Table.1, typical VOCs and their fingerprint absorptions are summarized for non-invasive disease diagnosis, where such information can reflect the health condition of patients in real-time. Our proposed miniaturized IR-NOSES provides a chip-scale solution for VOC identification with high accuracy aiming at early-stage diagnosis before the patients perceive apparent clinical symptoms. With the aid of machine learning (ML) analytics, the IR-NOSES can achieve low-cost healthcare and monitoring in the era of Artificial Intelligence of Things (AIoT) technology.

Table. 1 IR properties and diseases biomarkers for Selected VOC gas molecules