Determination of Halitosis by Exhaled Breath Analysis Using Semiconductor Metal Oxide Sensors and Chemometric Methods

Abstract

Halitosis is a condition associated with bad breath. Although halitosis is a disease in its own right, it is often a symptom of more serious diseases (diabetes mellitus, renal failure, azotemia, etc.). The currently used method for diagnosing halitosis is the organoleptic method, which relies on a trained specialist evaluating the patient's breath odor. This approach to diagnosing halitosis is subjective, uncomfortable for both patient and doctor, and necessitates the involvement of a specially trained professional. As an alternative, instrumental diagnostics employing metal oxide semiconductor (MOS) sensor arrays offer a promising avenue by enabling patient classification through predeveloped models. This paper considers the application of seven MOS sensors of different compositions at three different temperatures. Different methods of chemometric data analysis were applied: k-nearest neighbors (kNN), decision trees (DT), support vector machine (SVM), logistic regression (LR), and projection on latent structures discrimination analysis (PLSDA). All applied methods demonstrated their effectiveness and achieved selectivity, sensitivity, and accuracy values exceeding 85%. Additionally, a combined classifier leveraging responses from all previously studied classifiers was explored, achieving near-perfect classification accuracy.