WASHINGTON, Feb. 15—A team of scientists at JILA, a joint institute of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the University of Colorado (CU) at Boulder, has shown that by sampling a person’s breath with laser light they can detect molecules in the breath that may be markers for diseases like asthma or cancer. While many studies have been done to showcase the potential of optical technologies for breath analysis, the JILA approach takes an important step toward demonstrating the full power of optics for this prospective medical application. Their findings are published in the latest issue of the Optical Society of America’s open-access journal Optics Express.
