An “electronic nose” has been developed that can sniff out cancer in patients’ breath.

The device can distinguish between people with the disease and healthy individuals.

Scientists believe it may be especially useful for identifying patients with head-and-neck cancers which are often diagnosed late.

The Israeli researchers collected breath samples from 82 people who either had head-and-neck cancer, lung cancer, or were cancer-free.

The Nano Artificial Nose (NA-Nose) device was able to tell apart breath molecules from head-and-neck cancer patients and healthy individuals. It also distinguished between lung cancer patients and healthy participants, and between head-and-neck cancer and lung cancer patients.

Lead researcher Hossam Haick, professor at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, said: “There’s an urgent need to develop new ways to detect head-and-neck cancer because diagnosis of the disease is complicated, requiring specialist examinations.

“We’ve shown that a simple ‘breath test’ can spot the patterns of molecules which are found in head-and-neck patients in a small, early study.

“We now need to test these results in larger studies to find if this could lead to a potential screening method for the disease.”

The study is published in the Journal of Cancer Research, owned by Cancer Research UK.