Impact of individual training parameters and manner of taking breath odor samples on the reliability of canines as cancer screeners

Walczak, Marta; Jezierski, Tadeusz; Górecka-Bruzda, Aleksandra; Sobczyńska, Magdalena; Ensminger, John

doi:10.1016/j.jveb.2012.01.001

Cited by 43 publications

(59 citation statements)

References 31 publications

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“…This sample source arrangement is only a problem when the set of control sample sources consists exclusively, or almost exclusively, of healthy controls, in which case the detector may simply learn to indicate samples from individuals with health abnormalities. Such conditions were arranged in four of the reviewed studies (Buszewski et al, 2012;Horvath et al, 2013;McCulloch et al, 2006;Walczak et al, 2012).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Animal olfactory detection of human diseases: Guidelines and systematic review

Edwards

Browne

Schoon

et al. 2017

Journal of Veterinary Behavior

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Animal olfactory detection of human diseases has attracted an increasing amount of interest from researchers in recent years. Because of the inconsistent findings reported in this body of research and the complexity of scent detection research, it is difficult to ascertain the potential value of animal detectors in operational diagnostic algorithms. We have outlined key factors associated with successful training and evaluation of animals for operational disease detection and, using these key factors as points for comparison, conducted a systematic review of the research in this area. Studies that were published in peer-reviewed outlets and that described original research evaluating animals for detection of human diseases were included in the review. The majority of relevant studies have assessed dogs as detectors of various forms of cancer. Other researchers have targeted bacteriuria, Clostridium difficile, hypoglycemia, and tuberculosis. Nematodes and pouched rats were the only exceptions to canine detectors. Of the 28 studies meeting inclusion criteria, only 9 employed operationally feasible procedures. The most common threat to operational viability was the use of a fixed number of positive samples in each sample run. Most reports included insufficient information for replication or adequate evaluation of the validity of the findings. Therefore, we have made recommendations regarding the type of information that should be included when describing research in this area. The results of this systematic review suggest that animal detectors hold promise for certain diagnostic applications but that additional research evaluating operationally viable systems for olfactory detection of human diseases is necessary.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Animal olfactory detection of human diseases: Guidelines and systematic review

Edwards

Browne

Schoon

et al. 2017

Journal of Veterinary Behavior

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“…From the six dogs that started training procedure, two had to be excluded as it turned out that they were not suitable for this kind of task. A selection process during training with following exclusion of unqualified dogs is described in various studies on scent detection dog training (Kiddy et al, 1978;Kiddy and Mitchell, 1981;Richards et al, 2008;Walczak et al, 2012). In some studies concerning scent detection training play was used as reward instead of food (Horvath et al, 2008;Sonoda et al, 2011).…”

Section: Challenges In Trainingmentioning

confidence: 99%

How to train a dog to detect cows in heat—Training and success

Johnen

Heuwieser

Fischer-Tenhagen

2015

Applied Animal Behaviour Science

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“…Over the past decade, the use of dogs to detect and alert to human health conditions has expanded. There is growing evidence that dogs can be trained to alert to human disease samples, including, but not limited to: bladder cancer (1), breast cancer (2), cervical cancer (3), colorectal cancer (4), lung cancer (2,(5)(6)(7), ovarian cancer (8,9), prostate cancer (10), melanoma (11), Clostridium difficile (12), and cystic fibrosis bacterial pathogens (13) [see Edwards et al (14) for the most recent systematic review]. These studies employ a variety of human sample types, including breath, urine, blood plasma, excrement and sebum.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Differences in the Search Behavior of Cancer Detection Dogs Trained to Have Either a Sit or Stand-Stare Final Response

et al. 2020

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Recent literature has demonstrated that dogs have the potential to detect, and communicate the presence of, various human diseases. However, there is a lack of investigation into whether commonplace training differences within the field could influence a dog's behavior during a biomedical detection task. Here we report on the behavior of four dogs trained to alert to blood plasma samples taken from individuals with ovarian cancer. One hundred trials per dog were selected from routine video recordings collected over a period of 13 months. Videos were coded frame by frame to quantify sample checking, alerting behavior, and durations of alert. Dogs had previously been trained to elicit a final response behavior once they had located the target odor. Two dogs had a "sit" response while the other two had a "stand-stare" response. Alert behavior was categorized as true positive (a correct alert to a cancer sample) or false positive (an incorrect alert to biological and non-biological controls and distractors). Hesitations were also recorded, where the dog either checks the sample twice or, spends a longer duration of time sniffing the sample than a true pass without carrying out their final response. Results show individual variation in the total frequency of false alerts elicited. However, the rate of hesitations appears to be influenced by alert style, with stand-stare dogs carrying out 40 and 32, respectively (total = 72) and sit dogs carrying out 7 and 8, respectively (total = 15). The stand-stare dogs had a non-significant difference in the duration of their true and false positive alerts. In contrast, the sit dogs showed a significant difference (p < 0.001), maintaining their false alerts for, on average, two times the duration of their true alerts. Stand-stare dogs increased the duration of time spent in contact with the port when plasma samples were present, whereas sit dogs spent on average 0.3 s in contact with the port regardless of what sample type it contained. These findings suggest that the type of operant response a biomedical detection dog has been trained may influence their sample checking and response behavior.

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Impact of individual training parameters and manner of taking breath odor samples on the reliability of canines as cancer screeners

Cited by 43 publications

References 31 publications

Animal olfactory detection of human diseases: Guidelines and systematic review

Animal olfactory detection of human diseases: Guidelines and systematic review

How to train a dog to detect cows in heat—Training and success

Differences in the Search Behavior of Cancer Detection Dogs Trained to Have Either a Sit or Stand-Stare Final Response

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