Exhaled air analysis using wideband wave number tuning range infrared laser photoacoustic spectroscopy

The infrared laser photoacoustic spectroscopy (LPAS) and the pattern-recognition-based approach for noninvasive express diagnostics of pulmonary diseases on the basis of absorption spectra analysis of the patient's exhaled air are presented. The study involved lung cancer patients (N = 9), patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (N = 12), and a control group of healthy, nonsmoking volunteers (N = 11). The analysis of the measured absorption spectra was based at first on reduction of the dimension of the feature space using principal component analysis; thereafter, the dichotomous classification was carried out using the support vector machine. The gas chromatography-mass spectrometry method (GC-MS) was used as the reference. The estimated mean value of the sensitivity of exhaled air sample analysis by the LPAS in dichotomous classification was not less than 90% and specificity was not less than 69%; the analogous results of analysis by GC-MS were 68% and 60%, respectively. Also, the approach to differential diagnostics based on the set of SVM classifiers usage is presented. (C) 2017 Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE)