Israel scientists have developed what they are describing as a "breathalyzer" for cancer.

The device, reported in the American Chemical Society journal Nano Letters, uses a small array of flexible sensors that can accurately “smell” and detect compounds in breath samples that are specific to cancer patients.

Lead researcher Hossam Haick, with the Technion Israeli Institute of Technology, noted the test could offer a dramatic improvement over conventional methods of diagnosing cancer, which could speed treatments.

“Diagnosing cancer today usually involves various imaging techniques, examining tissue samples under a microscope, or testing cells for proteins or genetic material,” Haick’s team noted.

“Here, we report a simple, inexpensive, portable sensing technology to distinguish the breath of lung cancer patients from healthy subjects without the need to pre-treat the exhaled breath in any way.”

To test the new device, researchers collected the breath of nearly 100 people — 40 of whom had been diagnosed with cancer. In chemical tests of the compounds in the breath of those volunteers, the researchers identified cancer “fingerprints” that allowed them to accurately distinguish between those with the disease and healthy individuals.

The researchers now plan to conduct larger clinical trials they hope will confirm their test results and lead to wider use of the device.