ABSTRACT

In past years, numerous electronic nose (e-nose) developments have been published describing analyses of solid-, liquid- or gaseous media in microbiological-environmental-, agricultural- or medical applications. However, little has been reported about complex methodological pitfalls that might be associated with commercially available e-nose technology. As a novel bionic analytical technique, an electronic nose, inspired by the mechanism of the biological olfactory system and integrated with modern sensing technology, electronic technology and pattern recognition technology, has been widely used in many areas. Moreover, recent basic research findings in biological olfaction combined with computational neuroscience promote its development both in methodology and application Our aim is to develop pattern recognition software that is responsible for interpreting the output from the gas sensors in the real environment where both the sensors and the environment are likely to drift.