Hi everyone. I’m on my way back to California and will be heading to ASCO in Chicago next week. The travel continues, so today we’re going to take a very brief look at the companies using dogs to detect cancer. Stories where people felt like their pets could “sense” their cancer before they were diagnosed seem relatively common, and it seems at least plausible that dogs, with their highly sensitive olfactory systems, might be picking up on something.
Well, companies like SpotitEarly and Dognosis have been trying to put that into practice. These companies have been publishing papers in the literature for some years now and, basically, their argument for this detection method is that dogs can detect volatile organic compounds that might signify if someone has cancer. Then, both companies use AI to pick up on signals in the dogs’ behavior or other certain markers (like signals from a doggy EEG cap) to try to see if the dog has detected something. The dogs reportedly can detect cancer with an accuracy rate in the mid 90%, according to the companies. They’re obviously very cute, too.
If it really works, well that will be very interesting. The companies have said that one issue they are faced with is scaling.
