Instrumentation and sensors for human breath analysis

Exhaled breath contains a vast milieu of compounds, both volatile and non-volatile, that appear to correlate with physiological processes on-going in the body. These breath biomarkers hold enormous diagnostic potential when they are adequately measured and monitored. Thus, instrumentation geared towards breath analysis applications has expanded rapidly in the last decade, although challenges for future research still exist. This chapter briefly reviews the history of analytical instrumentation and breath biosensors that have been reported in the literature, and corresponding data analysis approaches that have been attempted to date.