Breath Analysis of COPD Patients by Terahertz/Millimeter-Wave Gas Spectroscopy - A Proof-of-Principle Study

We demonstrate the application of terahertz/millimeter-wave gas spectroscopy to the analysis of exhaled human breath from a clinical environment. 28 sets of samples from patients with the Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease were measured and analyzed. Comparison with gas chromatography-mass spectrometry, a very well-established method, showed very good correlation of up to R=0.93. The variations between duplicate samples were also as small as in the reference measurements