SCENTinel 2.0 rapidly screens for quantitative and qualitative olfactory disorders
Oral presentation
The COVID-19 pandemic highlights more than ever the need for accurate, reliable and rapid smell testing on a large scale. SCENTinel – a 2-min smell test – was recently developed to assess odor detection, odor intensity, and odor identification ability, discriminating anosmia from normosmia. Here, we assess whether SCENTinel can discriminate quantitative smell dysfunction, including hyposmia, and qualitative smell dysfunction (e.g., parosmia, phantosmia). To enable improved discrimination for qualitative smell dysfunction, we incorporated a new module: odor hedonic perception. A large sample of participants (N=370) were a priori divided as follows: qualitative smell dysfunction (self-report only parosmia/phantosmia, N=86), quantitative smell dysfunction (report only anosmia/hyposmia, N=144), mixed (report both qualitative and quantitative smell dysfunction, N=107), and normal smell function (N=33). Using machine learning techniques, a SCENTinel model can discriminate quantitative vs. qualitative smell dysfunction with high accuracy (0.81 AUROC). Via exploratory analyses, we additionally tested whether SCENTinel can discriminate anosmia from hyposmia and parosmia, by considering a subset of participants who only reported one type of smell dysfunction (N=244). SCENTinel can discriminate anosmia from hyposmia (0.93 AUROC), anosmia from parosmia (0.92 AUROC), and hyposmia from parosmia (AUROC 0.83). We conclude that SCENTinel is a rapid smell test that can be used to screen for quantitative and qualitative smell dysfunction. This research was supported by NIH RADx-rad initiative U01 DC019578 and T32 DC000014.