Odor clustering and discrimination using an odor separating system

In this study, odor evaluation and discrimination are examined. First, an odor separating system that imitates the odor receptive mechanism of biological olfaction is developed. This system enables a rough detection of odor by measuring the molecular size and polarity of odorants. Using representative odor materials that belong to different biological glomeruli clusters, odor information extracted on time course patterns can be obtained by the system. The extracted features can be used for creating an odor map similar to the one created in the receptive mechanism, which can classify qualities by their odor-cluster attributes. Mixed odors can be discriminated and decomposed into their elemental clusters. The map obtained from this study can be used for odor matching analysis.