The Medical Detection Dogs Charity in Milton Keynes, UK, began a ground-breaking study in 2024 to teach seven pooches how to detect tumours simply by smelling urine pots from hospital patients.
Now Cocker Spaniels Mango, Callie and Dotty, Labradors Hetty, Rosie and Jodie, and Flat-coated Retriever Willow are showing real signs of success.
They have proved to researchers they can sniff out bowel cancer - and now face a stage of tricky 'blind tests' before the results are official.
Now Cocker Spaniels Mango, Callie and Dotty, Labradors Hetty, Rosie and Jodie, and Flat-coated Retriever Willow are showing real signs of success.
They have proved to researchers they can sniff out bowel cancer - and now face a stage of tricky 'blind tests' before the results are official.
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00:00My name's Rob Harris, I'm an operational canine specialist and today you're going to see Mark,
00:04one of our trainers, working Hetty, Jodie and Willow to detect bowel cancer. Now what that
00:10means is when we're in the room there are a number of samples are set out, so in this case LB4,
00:16some of those contain normal urine, maybe from someone that's unhealthy but doesn't have bowel
00:21cancer and one will contain bowel cancer. So Mark will task the dog down the line and as the dog
00:27sniffs down each one of the samples when it comes across the right target, in this case bowel
00:30cancer, it will sit down and then Mark uses a device called a clicker which gives an audible
00:35signal to the dog to say it's correct, that the behaviour that they've displayed, which is a sit,
00:40is correct and the dog will then come back for a reward. So the project that you'll see him
00:44working today on bowel cancer is really really innovative, so it's the first time canines have
00:49been used to show that the odour of bowel cancer is available in a sample of urine.
00:54Our clinician Mr Ian Hunter from Hull University Hospital was really interested in the work of the
00:59dog because he carries out surgery that's organ preservation when he detects bowel cancer
01:04and what that means is he will use something called targeted radiotherapy to try and help
01:08the treatment of bowel cancer but that can unfortunately have a recurrence rate so he's
01:13interested in whether dogs are able to support in the detection of bowel cancer in that remission
01:18stage. Medical Detection Dogs charity was founded in 2008 and since that time we've worked on all
01:24sorts of different diseases, these include bladder cancer, prostate cancer, colorectal
01:30cancer as we're talking about today, also things called pseudomonas, malaria and parkinson's
01:35disease. When we're looking for a recruit to become a biodetection dog for the charity
01:40it's really important for us that dog is a problem solver, it really likes to use its brain and it's
01:44motivated by toys, food or by praise by the handler because this is a challenging role for the dog
01:50it requires a lot of problem solving skills. We don't know what this odour is so we are reliant
01:55on the dog being able to discriminate between what is a healthy person what is an unhealthy person
02:00initially but then it has to move into if I've got a problem with a certain organ like my prostate
02:05there are other conditions that are not cancerous the dog needs to be able to say no that's not
02:09the right thing but yes you do have cancer. On average one of our recruits will spend six months
02:14to a year training to do this fantastic work and that's because the challenge they have in having
02:19to use their nose to be able to detect disease is difficult it's not an easy thing and we have to
02:24step through a lot of different procedures to be able to get the dog there so one of the things we
02:28have to teach it to do is learn what the clicker is. So that clicker is the audible signal the dog
02:34is going to hear when it knows it's done something correct and we start things quite simple when the
02:38dog is sitting, when it's downing, when it recalls and then we actually progress things to searching
02:43for a toy for instance and then we may cut that toy up and hide it and make it more difficult to
02:47find and every time the dog is successful we'll hear this audible sound and that will then say to
02:51the to the dog and help the handler know when to actually give the reward. So over a number of
02:56years medical detection dogs has been looking at the way that the dog interacts with the sample
03:02so the stands you'll see working today are a collaboration with the Open University
03:06and they are taking readings from the dog of how much it's interested in a sample so they have a
03:11pressure sensor on them. Also they're able to measure the length of time the dog stays with
03:15that sample so we're able to use that as a signal to let us know how confident the dog is with that
03:21one particular sample. What these pieces of machinery do are linked back to a laptop that
03:25takes an independent reading so eventually over time we're hoping to develop an AI model that's
03:30able to interpret the dog's responses and in the future who knows we might be able to attach that
03:35to an automatic rewarder so the dog actually gets its reward from machine rather than a person.
03:41you