SBIR-STTR Phase II award-Advratech DOD-Terahertz Spectroscopic Chemical Sensor for Analysis of Fatigued Human Breath

Name: Ivan Medvedev, Ph.D.
Phone: (937) 775-2561
Email: ivan.medvedev@wright.edu

https://www.sbir.gov/sbirsearch/detail/1159801

Sleep deprivation, exercise, or continuous mental tasking are fatigue-related contributors in DoD mishaps. Therefore, a critical need exists for fatigue detection technologies which are real-time, non-invasive, compact, portable, and accurate to aid decisions to replace or rest an individual as a preventative measure. Certain compounds in human breath have been linked to disease states, and it is anticipated that fatigue affects breath composition similarly. Our approach utilizes THz spectroscopy which is capable of detecting and measuring numerous breath biomarkers with absolute specificity, high sensitivity, and high throughput. In Phase I, the THz spectroscopy detection method was validated against GC/MS methods and identified breath compounds isoprene, dimethyl sulfide, and acetaldehyde in sleep-deprived individuals that correlate well with results from cognitive tests measuring fatigue. In Phase II, we will extend GC/MS and THz spectroscopy analysis in sleep-deprived subjects to acquire data for algorithm development to validate predictive capabilities of breath biomarker analysis for fatigue. We will also build and validate a compact, portable, integrated table top THz chemical sensor capable of monitoring breath compounds in real-time. Advratech is poised to collaborate with Boeing, WPAFB (Human Systems Division and AFRL/711th HPW) and TITUS during Phase II to accelerate commercialization of the proposed technology.; BENEFIT: The field of breath biomarkers is relatively unexplored compared to tests and diagnostics based on blood, urine, or other bodily parameters (i.e., EKG). The benefits and potential commercial applications of THz sensor technology address both issues of breath diagnostics and the detection of a wide array of compounds. THz spectroscopic sensors are unique in their ability to achieve high sensitivity and near absolute specificity and are amenable to miniaturization, portability, and high-throughput. We will refine our algorithms in Phase II for the putative biomarkers to develop a predictive capability of when an individual may be fatigued and a drop in performance may occur. This non-invasive approach to detect fatigue will benefit DoD and commercial industries in which fatigue has contributed to accidents, i.e., commercial pilots and drivers. Athletes and Special Operations Forces, who engage in strenuous training and sometimes irregular sleep, will also benefit from early fatigue warnings before conditions such as rhabdomyolysis develop. Lastly, THz spectroscopy is ideal for environmental monitoring in the field as this technique can detect most light compounds with electric dipole moments. Thus, with spectroscopic library, hardware and software development, THz sensors can be utilized in a variety of health, human performance, and environmental settings.

Breathtaking: Wright State researchers developing disease-detecting exhalation device

Assistant physics professor Ivan Medvedev (foreground) with student researchers (left to right) Jessica R. Thomas, Tianle Guo and Daniela Branco.

http://webapp2.wright.edu/web1/newsroom/2013/10/02/breathtaking-wright-state-researchers-developing-disease-detecting-exhalation-device/

By Jim Hannah

 

Diabetes, kidney disease, even cancer. Their presence in the human body can change the smell and chemistry of a person’s breath. So a Wright State University researcher and his team are building a novel breath-analysis device designed to detect these and other diseases.
“It will be a Breathalyzer on steroids,” said Ivan Medvedev, Ph.D., an assistant physics professor who is heading the effort. “This will allow us to have a warning of sorts. We are very excited about it. The technology is solid.”
Medvedev and his team of student researchers—Jessica R. Thomas, Tianle Guo and Daniela Branco—are working their magic in a basement lab at Fawcett Hall forested with equipment.
Long, insulated gas-filled cylinders run across a laboratory table top. Open laptop computers shadowed by spaghetti-like strands of red, yellow and black computer connecting wires stand at attention like sentinels. A towering white tank of liquid nitrogen muscles into the space.
Medvedev’s plan is to use terahertz radiation to detect chemical changes in the human breath. Terahertz radiation consists of invisible light waves in the electromagnetic spectrum higher in frequency than microwave and lower than infrared light. It has been used for years by astronomers to detect molecules in interstellar space in an effort to determine how stars form.
Terahertz radiation has an advantage over other electromagnetic waves because it is so sensitive and produces very sharp spectra, making it easier to identify a wide variety of chemical molecules. Engineers have just recently developed somewhat simple terahertz radiation generators and detectors. In addition, computers have become powerful enough to handle all of the data created in the process.
“Technology is at the point where we can actually now detect those spectra and use them not for interstellar detection but for terrestrial applications,” Medvedev said.
Up until now, the standard technology for chemical analysis has been gas chromatography-mass spectroscopy, which fragments molecules with an electron beam. However, that technology has a limited number of detection channels and trouble analyzing complex mixtures.
“That’s where we come in,” said Medvedev. “We detect spectra and there are so many lines; the signatures are very unique. That is one of the biggest advantages.”
The goal is to come up with a non-invasive way of making an early diagnosis of a disease and minimizing its impact. The detector will be designed to identify and quantify chemicals in the breath such as the acetone, toluene and methanol associated with diabetes or the ammonia and urea linked to kidney disease or the sulfur-bearing compounds associated with liver cancer and cirrhosis.
One of the ambitious goals of the research is to tackle the detection of cancer, which is not likely to manifest itself with a single chemical in human breath.
“This technology will enable us to actually detect hundreds of chemicals simultaneously from a single exhalation,” Medvedev said. “The sensor will detect a variety of chemicals with very high accuracy of what’s in your breath. And then having established the baselines of those chemicals, you can actually draw conclusions about what disease that patient may have. We’re moving into something that nobody has done before.”
Medvedev and team are currently trying to determine what levels of the chemicals are normal in the human breath so they can detect elevated levels. Then the equipment must be miniaturized and made less expensive so it can be used commercially. Finally, it must undergo clinical testing on patients and others to see if it works. The whole process could take anywhere between five and 15 years.
Medvedev and his team have won a $100,000 share of a grant from Samsung for the research, with an opportunity to extend it for up to three years. The electronics giant is hoping to develop a compact, handheld device that will detect chemicals linked to diabetes. Wright State is collaborating with the University of Texas at Dallas, which has the technology to miniaturize the detectors and strong ties to the local medical community.
The technology may also be helpful in sniffing out pollution and detecting chemical attacks by terrorists.
“The military is also interested in this technology,” said Medvedev. “They would like to have an early warning of soldiers coming down with something before getting deployed. If you have a flu that has not yet expressed symptoms, you do not want to send a sick soldier to the battlefield.”
Medvedev’s paper on breath analysis was just accepted by Applied Physics Letters, a weekly peer-reviewed scientific journal published by the American Institute of Physics. The journal emphasizes new developments that lay the groundwork for fields that are rapidly evolving.
Medvedev grew up in Moscow, obtaining his master’s degree at the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology. He earned his Ph.D. at The Ohio State University and stayed there for five years as a research scientist before landing a faculty position at Wright State three years ago.
“What we have here is a fairly extensive research cluster of terahertz scientists,” Medvedev said. “All of the infrastructure is here. It’s a very good environment for terahertz research.”

Wright State University Terahertz Research Cluster- (with many interesting THz links)

Terahertz Research Cluster

Dr. Elliott Brown

Dr. Jason Deibel

Dr. Ivan Medvedev

Dr. Doug Petkie

---

Overview

The WSU Terahertz Research Cluster consists of four core faculty members and their respective research groups. These faculty include Dr. Elliott Brown, the Endowed Chair of Terahertz Sensing and Professor of Physics and Electrical Engineering, who has extensive expertise in millimeter wave and terahertz device physics, science, and systems. Dr. Jason Deibel, Assistant Professor of Physics and Electrical Engineering, specializing in time-domain spectroscopy using ultrafast lasers and computational electromagnetics. Dr. Ivan Medvedev, Assistant Professor of Physics, who specializes in gas phase spectroscopy and the development of spectrometers. Dr. Doug Petkie, Associate Professor of Physics and Electrical Engineering, who focuses on millimeter and submillimeter wave continuous-wave systems for radar, imaging and spectroscopy applications. Overall, the research cluster studies a wide range of phenomenology and develops applications in the areas of spectroscopy, imaging, microscopy, and non-destructive evaluation techniques. The group has over 6000 sq ft laboratory space on campus and also has access to space at the IDCAST facility. The research group is well equipped with instrumentation and methods covering most THz techniques.

The Terahertz Collaborative Research Center (THz CRC) is a cohort of university and government laboratories and research groups in the greater Dayton Region that have research efforts focused on millimeter wave and terahertz basic and applied science and engineering. This collaborative effort is made possible by the State of Ohio’s Third Frontier Program through awards to the Institute for the Development and Commercialization of Advanced Sensor Technology (IDCAST) and the Ohio Academic Research Cluster for Layered Sensing (OARCLS). The research groups work closely with many companies, particularly those associated with IDCAST, such as Traycer Diagnostics Systems and Photon-X, to acceleration the commercialization of THz technology.

---

Recent News

• Midwestern THz Workshop at WSU on November 19. Please see this announcement.

---

Terahertz Collaborative Research Center

---

THz CRC Related Links: (not a complete list!)

The microwave/millimeterwave/THz portion of the research cluster and other collaborators includes several faculty members at universities local to the Dayton, research scientists at AFRL, and several Ohio companies. Some of the partners include:

• Wright State University [Colleges of Science and Mathematics (Physics) and College of Computer Science and Engineering (Electrical Engineering)]

• Elliott Brown (Endowed Chair in THz Sensing and Professor of Physics and Electrical Engineering) Devices, systems/applications, multi-modal sensing and advanced materials.
• Doug Petkie (Associate Professor of Physics and Electrical Engineering) – continuous-wave mmwave/THz electronic experimental techniques, imaging, radar and gas phase spectroscopy.
• Jason Deibel (Assistant Professor of Physics and Electrical Engineering) – Time-Domain Spectroscopy experimental techniques, imaging, materials science, and computational EM modeling.
• Ivan Medvedev (Assistant Professor of Physics and Electrical Engineering) –
• Gregory Kozlowski (Associate Professor of Physics) – Microwave evanescent imaging and spectroscopy, nano sensing materials, and superconductivity.
• Lok Lew Yan Voon (Professor of Physics and Chair of Physics) – Band Structure Theory and Applications to Nanostructures, Computational Electromagnetics for Metamaterials
• Yan Zhuang (Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering) – NEMs, MEMs, high frequency and microwave components, and device physics.
• Brian Rigling (Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering) – Signal processing for radar and imaging exploitation.

• University of Dayton (Electro-optics Program and Department of Physics)
  • Peter Powers (Professor of Physics and Electro-Optics)
  • Joe Haus (Professor and Director of Electro-Optics)
  • Qiwen Zahn (Associate Professor of Electro-Optics)
• University of Dayton Research Institute
  • Gil Pacey (Senior Research Scientist)
  • Anita Taulbee (Research Scientist)

• Ohio State University (Department of Physics)
  • Frank De Lucia (Distinguished University Professor), Microwave Lab

• Miami University

• Air Force Institute of Technology (Department of Engineering Physics)
  • Michael Hawks (Assistant Professor of Physics)

• Air Force Research Laboratory
  • Propulsion Directorate – Non-destructive spectroscopy and imaging techniques on propulsion related systems.
  • Materials and Manufacturing Directorate – Development of materials for THz sources and detectors, systems for non-destructive imaging of air craft structures, electronic and optical properties of new materials.
  • Sensors Directorate – Development of THz sources (QCL).
  • Human Effectiveness Directorate – Terahertz human signatures and bio-signatures. Health and safety studies associated with mmwaves and THz.

• LOCI at UD - Laser and Optical Communications Institute
• ElectroScience Laboratory at OSU
• Several companies through Third Frontiers programs and other companies through SBIRs.
  • Mound Laser and Photonics Center
  • Princeton Nanotechnology Systems
  • Spectral Energies
  • Traycer Diagnostic Systems
  • Photon-X Inc.
  • STAN Solutions

---

Please send any comments to thz-physics'at'wright.edu or to Drs. Brown, Deibel, Medvedev or Petkie.