AI's new partner in cancer screening has four legs and an excellent sense of smell.

      A 10-minute breath sample may provide valuable insights for cancer-detecting dogs.

      Dognosis

      It appears AI doesn't need to completely replace all biological systems. For the time being, dogs are maintaining their roles. An Indian startup based in Bengaluru, Karnataka, is training canines using sensors and machine learning technology. Patients exhale normally into a face mask for around 10 minutes, send the sealed sample to a lab, and allow the dogs to begin their analysis.

      The dogs are trained to recognize alterations in volatile organic compounds (VOCs) linked to cancer. Sensors monitor various signals, including movement, respiration, brain activity, and body language, which Dognosis' AI converts into standardized data, rather than depending solely on a human handler to interpret each dog's behavior.

      The initial results are quite encouraging.

      Dognosis

      Dognosis' Phase 2 study comprised 1,502 participants, including 283 individuals with biopsy-confirmed cancer. Seven trained dogs successfully identified over 90% of cancer cases and more than 91% of non-cancer samples across seven different cancer types, with comparable outcomes reported for cases in their early stages.

      The startup claims its system can detect over 20 types of cancer, including breast, lung, cervical, and oral cancer. Its Phase 3 trial commenced in April across 10 hospitals with the goal of enrolling approximately 10,000 participants. Dognosis ultimately aims to have around 30 dogs to facilitate up to one million tests each year.

      However, it's important to note that this is not a definitive diagnostic solution. BreathEasy is being developed as a prescreening tool, meaning a positive result would prompt further medical testing instead of delivering a cancer diagnosis. Ongoing large-scale trials are needed to evaluate how well the method performs in broader clinical settings.

      Dognosis

      Dogs might be training their successors.

      The company seeks to gather enough information from canine olfaction to replicate those abilities using sensors, potentially eliminating dogs from the process altogether. Hence, even dogs are at risk of being replaced. For now, their sense of smell serves as the biological sensing hardware while AI handles consistency and scalability.

      Dognosis plans to launch an at-home prescreening service in India in 2027 for a modest fee. If its larger trials are successful, the idea of breathing into a mask and allowing an AI-assisted dog to sniff it may soon feel far less bizarre than it sounds.

      Vikhyaat Vivek is a tech journalist and reviewer with seven years of experience in consumer hardware coverage.

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