Real-time breath gas analysis of carbon monoxide : laser-based detection and pulmonary gas exchange modeling

Abstract: Breath gas analysis is a promising approach for non-invasive medical diagnostics and physiological monitoring. Real-time, breath-cycle resolved biomarker detection facilitates data interpretation and has the potential to improve the diagnostic value of breath tests as exhalation profiles carry spatiotemporal information about biomarker origin and gas exchange in the respiratory tract. This thesis presents and scrutinizes a novel methodology for the analysis of real-time breath data, where single-exhalation profiles are simulated using a pulmonary gas exchange model and least-squares fitted to measured expirograms to extract airway and alveolar contributions and diffusing capacities. The methodology is demonstrated on exhaled breath carbon monoxide (eCO), a candidate biomarker for oxidative stress and respiratory diseases. The thesis mainly covers (1) the construction of a compact optical sensor based on tunable diode laser absorption spectroscopy (TDLAS) in the mid-infrared region (4.7 μm) for selective and precise real-time detection of CO in breath and ambient air (detection limit 9 ± 5 ppb at 0.1 s), (2) the design of an advanced online breath sampling system, (3) the implementation of a trumpet model with axial diffusion (TMAD) to simulate the CO gas exchange, and (4) the application of extended eCO analysis in clinical studies to establish the healthy non-smoker baseline of the eCO parameters and to study the response to CO and wood smoke exposure. It is shown that the TMAD adequately describes the gas exchange during systemic CO elimination for different breathing patterns, and that there is no difference between eCO parameters from mouth- and nose exhalations. Expirogram shape and eCO parameters exhibit a dependence on the exhalation flow rate, but for a given breathing maneuverer, the parameters lie in a narrow range. Airway CO is close to and correlates with ambient air CO, indicating negligible airway production in the healthy population. The alveolar diffusing capacity is independent of endogenous CO, even after exposure to elevated exogenous CO, and could be used to assess lung diffusion abnormalities. Compared to CO exposure, no clear additional effect of exposure to wood smoke particles on eCO is observed. The discrimination between endogenous and exogenous CO sources remains a challenge.