Back to Journals » Veterinary Medicine: Research and Reports » Volume 8

Canine scent detection of canine cancer: a feasibility study
Authors Dorman DC, Foster ML, Fernhoff KE, Hess PR
Received 11 August 2017
Accepted for publication 8 September 2017
Published 26 October 2017 Volume 2017:8 Pages 69—76
DOI https://doi.org/10.2147/VMRR.S148594
Checked for plagiarism Yes
Review by Single-blind
Peer reviewers approved by Dr Lucy Goodman
Peer reviewer comments 2
Editor who approved publication: Professor Young Lyoo
David C Dorman,1 Melanie L Foster,2 Katherine E Fernhoff,1 Paul R Hess2
1Department of Molecular and Biomedical Sciences, 2Department of Clinical Sciences, College of Veterinary Medicine, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC, USA
Abstract: The scent detection prowess of dogs has prompted interest in their ability to detect cancer. The purpose of this study was to determine whether dogs could use olfactory cues to discriminate urine samples collected from dogs that did or did not have urinary tract transitional cell carcinoma (TCC), at a rate greater than chance. Dogs with previous scent training (n=4) were initially trained to distinguish between a single control and a single TCC-positive urine sample. All dogs acquired this task (mean =15±7.9 sessions; 20 trials/session). The next training phase used four additional control urine samples (n=5) while maintaining the one original TCC-positive urine sample. All dogs quickly acquired this task (mean =5.3±1.5 sessions). The last training phase used multiple control (n=4) and TCC-positive (n=6) urine samples to promote categorical training by the dogs. Only one dog was able to correctly distinguish multiple combinations of TCC-positive and control urine samples suggesting that it mastered categorical learning. The final study phase evaluated whether this dog would generalize this behavior to novel urine samples. However, during double-blind tests using two novel TCC-positive and six novel TCC-negative urine samples, this dog did not indicate canine TCC-positive cancer samples more frequently than expected by chance. Our study illustrates the need to consider canine olfactory memory and the use of double-blind methods to avoid erroneous conclusions regarding the ability of dogs to alert on specimens from canine cancer patients. Our results also suggest that sample storage, confounding odors, and other factors need to be considered in the design of future studies that evaluate the detection of canine cancers by scent detection dogs.
Keywords: urinary tract cancer, cancer detection dogs, cancer odor, olfactory memory, multiple sample learning
This work is published and licensed by Dove Medical Press Limited. The full terms of this license are available at https://www.dovepress.com/terms.php and incorporate the Creative Commons Attribution - Non Commercial (unported, v3.0) License.
By accessing the work you hereby accept the Terms. Non-commercial uses of the work are permitted without any further permission from Dove Medical Press Limited, provided the work is properly attributed. For permission for commercial use of this work, please see paragraphs 4.2 and 5 of our Terms.