Portable device for Photoacoustic sensing of breath biomarkers

Project data

Funding entiy: Italian Ministry of University and Research

Call: PRIN 2022 PNRR

Coordinator: UNIVERSITA’ DEGLI STUDI DI SIENA

UNISI Principal Investigator: Marco Mugnaini

Department: Information engineering and mathematics

Start date:  30 November 2023 – End date: 29 November 2025  

Description

The project will address the issue of designing a portable and reliable device in the UV band to perform a multi-gas detection of some mixtures of interest in the identification of possible causes of lung disorders. It is actually well-known that some exhaled gasses may concur in the definition of dysfunctions and diseases connected to the lungs.

Asthma, and bacterial affections, in general, are correlated to the presence in the breath of some specific gasses in very low concentrations, which may range, depending on the involved species, from some hundreds of ppb up to some tens of ppm. In the present proposals, three research units will focus their efforts on designing and characterizing the performance of an instrument, relying on a photoacoustic (PA) chamber, suited for the detection of specific breath gasses.

The baseline of this project will be the design of an optimized measurement chamber and the development of the most suited cost-effective electronics properly arranged to provide high reliability and long-term stability in multi-gas sensing.

 

The project is funded by European Union – Next-GenerationEU – National Recovery and Resilience PLAN (PNRR) – Mission 4, Component 2, Investiment 1.1 Fondo per il Programma Nazionale di Ricerca e Progetti di Rilevante Interesse Nazionale (PRIN). Codice Unico di Progetto (CUP): B53D23023970001