(Image source from: A nose that can sniff cancer)

Ever wished your doctors could sniff off an illness from a distance without making you undergo painful tests and procedures? That might now be a near possibility. A team of Finnish investigators have invented an electronic nose that can detect prostate cancer by smelling urine samples.

Called the 'eNose', this breakthrough invention can successfully discriminate the urologic malignancies, or the difference between prostate cancer and benign prostatic hyperplaisa (BPH) by  'sniffing' urine head space.

The heterogeneity of prostate cancer often makes it hard to diagnose and predict tumor progression in a  body. A novel diagnostic like electronic nose can help defer wrong prognosis and make job easier for.

Made of a cluster of nonspecific sensors, the device produces a profile or a “smell print” when exposed to a urine sample.

"The performance with the eNose matches that of prostate specific antigen (PSA) test results in previous literature and the results are achieved rapidly and in a completely noninvasive manner,” Niku KJ Oksala, from school of medicine at University of Tampere, Finland, said.

AW: Suchorita Choudhury