4 ms·

How is a digital nose different than a mass spec applied to sweat/blood/saliva?

• sfink 6y ago
  That seems like trying to figure out the plot of a book given a histogram of its letter frequencies. A mass spectrometer is not going to be able to distinguish a rich mixture of compounds. Nor can it distinguish molecules with the same elements. But it's been done, and apparently might still be in limited use: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_spectrometry#Respired_gas_monitor_spectrometry https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_spectrometry#Respired_gas...
  • petra 6y ago
    How does the process for distinguishing a rich mixture of compounds looks like ? How complex/automatable is it ?
    • sfink 6y ago
      From the article, it sounds like doing it in a way that approaches the sense of smell is quite hard, and no adequate approach has yet been figured out.
  • Metacelsus 6y ago
    >A mass spectrometer is not going to be able to distinguish a rich mixture of compounds. Nor can it distinguish molecules with the same elements. That's why GC-MS/MS is a thing