Portable e-mucosa system : mimicking the biological olfactory

Here we report on the implementation of a new portable electronic nose instrument, inspired by the human olfactory system. Our 'Portable e-Mucosa' (PeM) utilizes three large sensor arrays consisting of 200 chemoresistive sensors per array, combined with two columns coated with differently retentive layers. This combination provides spatio-temporal information, mimicking the biological 'nasal chromatograph' effect[1]. These have been integrated with control electronics, a pre-concentrator, temperature control and a sample delivery system to produce a fully functional electronic nose (e-nose) instrument. Data from this device, when used with a pattern recognition method that utilizes temporal information and the large data set, we believe improves the discrimination power of this instrument over conventional e-noses