This paper describes the potential of evaluating odor intensities in a gas
chromatographic effluent by cross-modality matching with the finger span (G
C-O-FSCM). A simple prototype is described that allows the precise measurem
ent and acquisition of the distance between the thumb and another finger du
ring the analysis. The stimulation of panelists at the sniffing port with e
thyl butyrate shows a log-log relation between peak height values obtained
from finger span and stimulus concentrations. It also shows that all paneli
sts are able to perform this task but with different precision, which is us
ed to select them. A triplicate evaluation by GC-O-FSCM of the intensity of
flavor constituents in synthetic solutions shows that a four-member panel
is perfectly able to determine most of the characteristics of the solutions
and to create a finger span multidimensional space highly correlated with
the theoretical intensity space.