The Pooch Test

MRIs, blood tests, and X-rays are all instruments on a long list of cancer screening tools. But what if there was another less invasive, but equally effective way to sniff out the disease – and their names were Mars, Moon, and Pluto?

Welcome to a new, experimental cancer screening method that is pairing three dogs with artificial intelligence and is able to detect the odor of cancer on patients’ breaths, according to a recent study.

The screening method taps into dogs’ “amazing olfactory capabilities,” Assaf Rabinowicz, the chief technology officer at SpotitEarly, the company that invented the method, told Science News.

Rabinowicz and his team trained Labrador retrievers into disease detectives that could sniff out even faint scents of the cancer odor. The dogs smelled the breath samples and sat if they sniffed breast, lung, colorectal, or prostate cancer.

Meanwhile, discerning whether the dogs are indicating yes or no by reading their body language is tricky for humans. This is where the researchers employed the help of AI, training an AI model that relies on machine learning and computer vision to interpret the dog’s cues.

The researchers then partnered with medical centers in Israel to test their model on the breath samples of nearly 1,400 participants: 261 of the participants tested positive for one of the four types of cancer the dogs trained for. The dogs sniffed out 245 of these cases and rarely indicated a false-positive.

The study showed that the canine-AI duo was highly accurate in detecting cancer, and successfully identified four types of cancer in 94 percent of cases.

Mars, Moon, and Pluto also detected early-stage cancers just as well as they did later-stage cancers, reported Science News.

Early detection is crucial because it can substantially contribute to increasing cancer survival rates, said Rabinowicz.

Mars, Moon, Pluto, and the other labradors who participated in the study are still continuing to contribute to research and development, Rabinowicz said. However, SpotitEarly is now working with beagles, as they are smaller and easier to train.

The company is planning a larger clinical trial in the United States, with early results expected in 2026.