Design and Construction of an Odour Sensor for Various Biomedical Applications

This project deals with the construction of electronic device that senses odour and its application in Telesurgery. Of the body\´s five senses, the sense of Smell is the most mysterious. In the past, gas chromatography and mass spectrometry have been used as sensing systems, although these are usually expensive and time consuming. Today, the development of odour sensor helped to analyze odors and hence applied in various Medical applications such as, Telesurgery. The odour sensor is generally made of two main parts: a sensing system and a pattern recognition system. The sensing system of the "Odour Sensor" consists of individual thin-film carbon-black polymer homogeneously mingled throughout a non-conducting polymer. When the composite is exposed to a vapor-phase analyte, the resistance varies, which is unique for each odour. The change in resistance is converted into voltage and hence given to the Computer through a Data Acquisition Card. The analysis of Sensor output is done using MatLAB code called Smellware. The response of the Smellware is given to Artificial Neural Network, that is pattern recognition system and hence odour is determined. The main application of this developed odour sensor is Telesurgery. The odour sensor would identify odours in the remote surgical environment. These identified odours would then be electronically transmitted to another site where an odour generation system would recreate them. This developed "odour sensor" was successfully tested and was submitted as a Project Work.