Japan develops personal identification system by... breath

It is an olfactory sensor with an accuracy of more than 97% in the first series of tests.

Researcher Chaiyanut Jirayupat at the Institute of Materials Chemistry and Engineering at Kyushu University and colleagues describe the new sensor in a paper recently published in the journal Chemical Communications.

'This technology relies on the unique characteristics of each individual. Physical features can be imitated or even altered by injury. Recently, human smell has become a new field in biometric identification. It's basically using your own chemistry to confirm who you are,' according to researcher Jirayupat.

Initially, Jirayupat's group focused on transdermal emissions, compounds produced by human skin. However, this method has limitations because the skin does not produce a high enough concentration of volatile compounds for the machine to detect.

The scientists then assessed people's ability to test their breath. According to researcher Jirayupat, human breath has previously been used to identify people with cancer, diabetes and COVID-19. The Kyushu University team identified a total of 28 compounds in the breath that could be used for biometric identification. They develop a series of olfactory sensors with 16 sources. Each sensor can identify a separate group of compounds. Each person's breathing sensor data is analyzed by the machine, helping to create an individual's profile.

Lead researcher Takeshi Yanagida said that they achieved an average of 97.8% accuracy in the first series of tests with six people. This accuracy was maintained when the sample size was increased to 20 individuals with many differences in age, sex and nationality.