Evaluation of E-nose technology for detection of the causative bacteria in different culture media on diabetic foot infection

The three different culture media namely blood agar, Mueller Hinton and MacConkey were used in this study to identify and classify the causative bacteria on diabetic foot infection using electronic nose (E-nose). All the samples were taken from the clinical specimens using standard swabbing technique. E-nose consisting an array of 32 conducting polymer sensors was used to detect volatile organic compounds (VOCs) released by the bacteria in the infected areas. The VOC profiles of three bacterial groups from three genera namely Escherichia coli (ECOLI), Staphylococcus aureus (SAU) and Pseudomonas aeruginosa (PAE) were characterized using statistical classification technique called Linear Discriminant Analysis (LDA) to differentiate between different agars used with individual bacteria species which accounted for all the data. Although these methods are still fundamental, there is an increasing shift toward molecular diagnostics of bacteria. This investigation showed that the E-nose was able to correctly classify different bacterial species in all three culture media with up to 90% accuracy.