Medical Detection Dogs have teamed up with experts at The Open University to develop new technology to enhance their cancer detection research.

The new technology, designed by Dr Clara Mancini and her colleagues at the Animal-Computer Interaction Lab, will be unveiled at the Royal Society Science Exhibition from 1st to 6th July.

The UK charity Medical Detection Dogs is the lead research organisation investigating the ability of dogs to detect the odour of volatile substances.

At their training centre in Buckinghamshire, the cancer detection dogs are presented with urine samples, some of which contain cancer volatiles.

The dogs are trained to smell all the samples and to alert to samples containing cancer.

The dogs could ultimately provide second line screening for cancers that are currently difficult to diagnose reliably, such as prostate, bladder and renal cancer.

Tests show the cancer detection dogs have a 93 per cent reliability with low false positives, as compared to a 75 per cent rate false positive for traditional PSA tests.

Now, Open University technology experts have created a piece of equipment which can measure how confident the dog is about its decision.

The equipment consists of a metal pressure pad below the tube which holds the sample.

The dog presses this pad with its nose when it smells the cancer, before signalling to its hander a positive finding by sitting down.

The sensors underneath the metal pad mean that a computer can record the level of pressure the dog used, which indicates the level of confidence the dog has.

Over time the data can be analysed to confirm the link between a high pressure detection and an accurate result.

Dr Claire Guest, CEO and Director of Operations of Medical Detection Dogs, commented: “This is a very exciting new piece of technology to assist us in our cancer detection research.

“The more data we can gather about the process of a dog detecting volatile substances, the more confident we can be about our work and the results we are currently achieving. This will mean that any second line screening using dogs will offer the highest potential in accuracy.”

“In the future electronic noses may do this work. However currently, the electronic noses are only 60 per cent reliable, far behind the dogs. The dogs are capable of cognitive thinking, so they can tell that although a patient’s form of cancer is slightly different to those they have detected before, it is cancer nevertheless.”

“The noses in contrast, are less intuitive and programming these noses is a very complex long process.”

Visitors to the Exhibition will be able to watch the dogs using the prototype technologies, and attempt to perform tasks wearing dichromatic goggles and boxing gloves to imitate paws to give them a ‘dog’s-eye-view.’

Source: Medical Detection Dogs