Portable, Low-Cost Approach for Identification Based on Individual Scent (IBIS)

Uniquely identifying an individual based on biometric information can currently be performed by using fingerprints, facial images and eye scans. These techniques frequently require the cooperation or at a minimum the acknowledgement from an individual that information is being gathered from them. An urgent need arises for non-cooperative surreptitious biometric collection tools, which may play an important role in real-time security monitoring and intelligence gathering. A biometric that can be collected non-cooperatively and from a distance (space and time) is an individual’s scent. For individual identification, one needs to look at the volatile organic compounds that reflect the individual’s gene expression and not other secondary confounding effects. This proposal will leverage the numerous studies and research efforts that have been conducted in order to refine the ability of uniquely identifying an individual based on the MHC-controlled odor profile and will demonstrate that an instrument consisting of a gas chromatograph coupled with a differential mobility spectrometer (a specific configuration of ion mobility) can provide the needed selectivity and sensitivity in a small, robust and relatively inexpensive package.