New Smartphone Camera Could Tell You What Things Are Made of

Zothecula writes How would you like to be able to know the chemical composition of something, just by taking a snapshot or video of it with your smartphone? You may eventually be able to, thanks to a compact hyperspectral imaging camera being developed at Tel Aviv University. "Hyperspectral imaging involves scanning light spectra not visible to the human eye, in order to identify the unique electromagnetic 'fingerprints' of various substances and processes. While this can already be done with larger cameras, a team led by Tel Aviv's Prof. David Mendlovic is developing a much smaller optical component that could conceivably be built into a smartphone. It utilizes MEMS (microelectromechanical systems) technology, and is reportedly 'suitable for mass production and compatible with standard smartphone camera designs.'"

Comments

Still waiting on MEMS to set the world afire

[damn_registrars]

I saw an academic talk on MEMS applied to mass spectrometry about a decade or so ago. It was promising to be the next greatest sensor; smaller, faster, lower power and sample requirements, with better resolution across wide mass ranges. For the most part it hasn't made it yet. It has turned out some interesting data in a few labs but it is far from being commercially viable.

Hopefully this group has figured out some other way to make it work for this specific application, and someone can build on it from there. It is impressive technology.

Re:Still waiting on MEMS to set the world afire

[damn_registrars]

An embedded microchannel in a MEMS plate resonator for ultrasensitive mass sensing in liquid. This is one published paper on (proteomics) mass spec using MEMS.

Real-time particle mass spectrometry based on resonant micro strings. This is another one.

Single-protein nanomechanical mass spectrometry in real time. Some times they call it "nanomechanical" instead, making it NEMS instead of MEMS.

As I said though it seemed like this would turn the world on its head for mass spec; tiny accurate sensors the size of eraser heads. It hasn't happened yet, and I'm not connected to it well enough to know why.

Re:Not to be used...

[Tablizer]

That would trigger a DMCA takedown notice, and you'll get belted by an orange and yellow clown.

No need

[93 Escort Wagon]

If I want to know the chemical makeup of anything, I'll just ask Moss to smell it for me.

Obligatory XKCD

[Fortran IV]

Atoms.

Nice for jewelry

[paulpach]

Would come in handy to see if that piece of jewelry is really gold and the diamond is not just cubic zirconia

Of course, it could be fooled by gold coating, bit it is still better than nothing.

Re:Nice for jewelry

[Rei]

Nice for a lot of things.

  * I'm somewhat of a rockhound. The ability to ID an unfamiliar mineral would be great.
  * I like mushroom hunting. The problem is that one has to ignore the vast majority of mushrooms because there's just so vastly many species and some can only be distinguished microscopically. But the list of dangerous mycotoxins is actually surprisingly short. The ability to accurately detect whether there's a dangerous amount of a mycotoxin in a sample would help alleviate a lot of doubts. Those who like mushrooms for their recreational uses rather than cullinary uses would also like to know how high the psilocybin levels are.
  * The same applies to usefulness for identifying dangerous or useful compounds in unfamiliar plant species

Hypochondriacs would kill for a device like this, if it worked - aka checking for various contaminants on every product they buy and everything they put into their body. I'm sure environmental groups would love to just be able to walk around the outskirts of a chemical facility that they're protesting and take and analyze samples with their phones rather than having to send them at significant cost into the lab. Plant growers breeders could check to see whether their fruits, vegetables, etc have a unique nutritional / etc profile, or how that changes depending on climactic conditions, soil, and fertilization practices - again without taking huge numbers of samples. Vegetarians could check for chemicals only found in meat in their food. And on and on.

Really, there's no shortage of things one could do if they could ID chemical compositions without the effort and cost of laboratory testing today. So long as the system works well enough, that is. I have a suspicion that even if such a thing hits the market, it's probably going to only be able to pick out really pronounced spectral signatures - one might not have so much luck at detecting say an arbitrary protein at ppm quantities.

Still, even a very limited system would be useful.

Re:So, a tricorder?

[jellomizer]

Well yes.
Wouldn't that be great.
Infrared camera, to detect if the heart is beating or not. Being able to see what things are made out of.
The thing Star Trek missed, was the fact that they had horrible screens, and are really bulky, and they never seemed to play flappy bird on it.
 

Technological limitation

[geogob]

Hyperspectral imaging devices based on MEMS are not new. I've seen the first practical devices presented in conferences about 10 years ago. But I doupt we'll see flexible hyperspectral imaging devices like mobile telephones. Even for bigger hand-held spezialized devices it is far fetched. The problem is simply the data quantity. I deal with this problem daily with hyperspectral imaging; you are producing GB/s of data... Processing that near realtime is a true challenge.

What I can see possible with the state of the art are devices that are specialized to identify specific compounds. But a device that can do a generic and nonspecialized retrieval and identification of chemical compounds requires a lot of processing power - especially when dealing with hyperspectral data in contrast to simple spectral data. If you want to do a quantitative analysis, its even worse.

Re:Technological limitation

[geogob]

Its coming from my personal experience designing hyperspectral imagers capable of doing analysis such as what is presented in the example.

The compression is not really the problem. The biggest issue is data analysis and interpretation.

And the time component is obvious... you don't wand to look at the same object without moving with your handy for 2 hours to get the required SNR to be able to do a spectral analysis. You have minimum requirements in resolutions, spectral band and SNR. Theses parameter will vary lot depending on the species you are trying to identify and with which precision you want to do that. But for a comfortable observation time, with a non-specialized device, you'll quickly come in the range of GB/s... and that even at low spatial resolution.

Why not?

[sjbe]

Right now the chemical analytical techniques to figure out what the composition of a substance require huge machines and significant training in spectroscopy and there's no way of miniaturizing those techniques and automating the interpretation of the data.

"No way"? There are lots of things that used to require huge machines and significant training that don't anymore. While I don't think we're going to see a mass market pocket spectroscope in the next few years, but I would never say it cannot be done just because we can't do it yet. I've seen cell phones used for infrared imaging already. I see no reason why they couldn't perform some rudimentary spectroscopy tasks. Sure it won't match the professional lab equipment but I doubt anyone expects it to.

Re:Why not?

[inflamed]

The problem is that the spectroscopic techniques capable amenable to implemention on a small device can only give some general information about a material or mixture. This may be enough to select one option from a narrow set of possibilities (eg: is that drain pipe PVC or ABS plastic?). However, it is not going to identify the presence of a toxin in a bowl of soup or tell you that your gold watch is only gold-plated.

Re:So, a tricorder?

[meta-monkey]

And with their pads, the concept that a pad could hold more than one document at a time. You'd see someone who "had a lot of work to do" carrying a dozen pads or have them strewn about his desk.

Perfect is the enemy of good

[sjbe]

The problem is that the spectroscopic techniques capable amenable to implemention on a small device can only give some general information about a material or mixture

It doesn't have to do everything to be super useful. There is this tendency by a lot of people here on slashdot to think that something has to be a perfect replacement for existing technology to be viable. I could use something that could tell the difference between PVC and nylon right now. If it could do more that would be nice but even basic uses could be hugely beneficial.

However, it is not going to identify the presence of a toxin in a bowl of soup or tell you that your gold watch is only gold-plated.

That is a limitation but it's like saying that the camera in my cellphone is useless because it doesn't have a telephoto lens. There are a huge number of applications for a rudimentary spectroscope. I could use one in my factory today to check wire jacketing composition or conductor composition. (Brass or Bronze-Phosphor or Copper, etc)