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:Not to be used...

[Tablizer]

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

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.

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)