Analysis of urine using electronic tongue towards non-invasive cancer diagnosis

Electronic tongues (e-tongues) have been broadly employed in monitoring the quality of food, beverage, cosmetics, and pharmaceutical products, and in diagnosis of diseases, as the e-tongues can discriminate samples of high complexity, reduce interference of the matrix, offer rapid response. Compared to other analytical approaches using expensive and complex instrumentation as well as required sample preparation, the e-tongue is non-destructive, miniaturizable and on-site method with little or no preparation of samples. Even though e-tongues are successfully commercialized, their application in cancer diagnosis from urine samples is underestimated. In this review, we would like to highlight the various analytical techniques such as Raman spectroscopy, infrared spectroscopy, fluorescence spectroscopy, and electrochemical methods (potentiometry and voltammetry) used as e-tongues for urine analysis towards non-invasive cancer diagnosis. Besides, different machine learning approaches, for instance, supervised and unsupervised learning algorithms are introduced to analyze extracted chemical data. Finally, capabilities of e-tongues in distinguishing between patients diagnosed with cancer and healthy controls are highlighted.