Breath as the mirror of our body is the answer really blowing in the wind? Recent technologies in exhaled breath analysis systems as non-invasive sensing platforms

Abstract

Health care monitoring is an enormous field of research that has great potential to solve many problems in human life. In recent years, non-invasive health monitoring has become a prerequisite for early diagnosis of various diseases such as lung cancer, oxidative stress, diabetes, to enable the prompt treatment and screening of crucial chemicals. Although analyzing of exhaled breath has been correlated with advanced analytical techniques such as gas chromatography and infrared spectroscopy, breath analyzing biosensing systems offer a cost-effective, sensitive platform for a straightforward analysis. However, current non-invasive sensing strategies have been lacking in practicality in terms of the design and usage, on-site ability and accessibility. This review will critically discuss current commercialized breath analyzers, the recent achievements for the use of the detection towards chemical and biological substances from exhaled breath as non-invasive sensing systems including challenges/drawbacks by addressing the practical applications and concerns in the field. The different fabrication strategies, methodology of detection techniques involved in the development of the breath analyzing systems will be overviewed and discussed along with the future opportunities for possible point of care applications with smartphone integration in this review. The scientific and technological challenges in the field are discussed in the conclusion.