Patent ID: 7192782
Filing Date: 2007-03-20
Classification: G01N,Y02A,Y10T

Abstract:
1. A method for assessing human airway inflammation comprising steps of; collecting an orally exhaled human breath sample over an exhalation interval, wherein said orally exhaled human breath sample comprises orally exhaled NO and orally exhaled CO providing a spectrometer including a spectrometer light source, a spectrometer gas sample cell, a spectrometer detector and a spectrometer computer; placing said orally exhaled human breath sample in said spectrometer gas sample cell; illuminating said orally exhaled human breath sample with a spectrometer light source; detecting a transmitted light beam which has passed through said orally exhaled human breath sample with said spectrometer detector to produce a signal sampling; generating a human breath sample spectrum from said signal sampling; analyzing said human breath sample spectrum using said spectrometer computer, said step of analyzing including identifying an absorption characteristic of orally exhaled NO and an absorption characteristic of orally exhaled CO repeating said analyzing and generating to produce a series of gas mixture spectra, each spectrum having an absorption characteristic of the orally exhaled NO and the orally exhaled CO identifying a single signal sampling interval wherein a known concentration CO calculating a ratio of said simultaneous NO absorption intensity to said known concentration CO