Detection and classification of human body odor using an electronic nose

Abstract

An electronic nose (E-nose) has been designed and equipped with software that can detect and classify human armpit body odor. An array of metal oxide sensors was used for detecting volatile organic compounds. The measurement circuit employs a voltage divider resistor to measure the sensitivity of each sensor. This E-nose was controlled by in-house developed software through a portable USB data acquisition card with a principle component analysis (PCA) algorithm implemented for pattern recognition and classification. Because gas sensor sensitivity in the detection of armpit odor samples is affected by humidity, we propose a new method and algorithms combining hardware/software for the correction of the humidity noise. After the humidity correction, the E-nose showed the capability of detecting human body odor and distinguishing the body odors from two persons in a relative manner. The E-nose is still able to recognize people, even after application of deodorant. In conclusion, this is the first report of the application of an E-nose for armpit odor recognition. © 2009 by the authors.