Slashdot Mirror
Pocket SCiO Spectrometer Sends Chemical Composition of Anything To Smartphones
MojoKid writes: Is that a tricorder in your pocket or are you just happy to see me? All joking aside, the handheld SCiO could truly make you feel like a member Bones McCoy's medical team. The SCiO turns science fiction into science fact by shrinking mass spectrometry technology used in traditional lab settings into a device small enough to fit in the palm of your hand. While pricey handheld spectrometers have been available for researchers, the SCiO is the first such device marketed directly at consumers. To get the SCiO down to a reasonable price point, Consumer Physics uses near-IR spectroscopy and optics typically found in smartphones to measure the light reflected from any given object. Held at a distance of 5 to 15 mm from the intended target, SCiO captures reflected spectrum data and uploads it to its own cloud platform. The company's proprietary algorithms then analyze the data and send the information back down to your smartphone (SCiO require a Bluetooth connection). Reportedly, this whole process occurs within 1.5 seconds. The hope is to empower consumers to learn more about the world around them and even about the things that we put in our mouth. You'll be able to ascertain nutritional information about the foods you eat without having to rely on labels, or even determine the ripeness of fruits and vegetables with the push of a button. The Whole Foods crowd will be all over this, one would think.
Can I test cocaine and MDMA with this?
shrinking mass spectrometry technology used in traditional lab settings into a device small enough to fit in the palm of your hand
Surely this device has nothing whatsoever to do with a mass-spec? It doesn't appear to use any of the techniques that a mass spectrometer does (even if it produces results to the non-technical consumer that appear similar) and to use the term sends a misleading message.
Maybe I should buy a whistle and re-badge it as a "sonic screwdriver"?
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
Designing spectrometer is what I do for a living and with my experience and knowledge, I have serious doubts this device has sufficient resolving power to do what they claim it can/would/should do. To identify chemical components, you need a minimum spectral resolution (depending on the species you want to identify). To do quantitative analysis, the requirements are event higher. Typically, for solid NIR spectroscopy, I would aim at 2 to 4 cm^-1 spectral resolution. Under this, you can maybe check for the presence of a specific compound or compound family, but the capability to do so will be very dependent on the overall chemical composition.
Its possible to reduce the size of a spectrometer while somewhat keeping the resolution. But that goes only up to a certain extent... and that goes only with trade on signal to noise ratio. At some point physics overtakes wishful thinking. Reducing the instrument, and thus the optical throughput, you need longer measurement times to achieve adequate signal quality. Quantitative analysis with a (large) lab NIR spectrometer can take minutes, depending on the material being analysed. When you design spectrometers, you are constantly trading on aspect for another and by bringing a NIR spectrometer to that size, you traded a LOT of stuff away.
I also see spectral calibration being an issue with this device, then it works in reflectance and not in transmittance. It cannot be self-calibrating and directly provide a transmission/absorption spectrum. Maybe it is calibrated once during the production and assumed to be stable? If that is sufficient is, from my experience, questionable.
On the other hand, this is a very exiting breakthrough. I might even get my hands on one for fun. Why? because its, as they so well market it, a liberalisation of matter. Its a first step in being able to identify any substance that we get our hands on. While it may not yet be able to provide a full chemical make-up of a product, with enough a priori information it may be very useful.
Let me give you an example where such a device can be its money worth. When you buy fruits and vegetables that are bio/organic, you want them really to be that way. This decision to spend more money on these healthier food items is solely based on trust, which is often exploited. I doubt that the analysis of such a product can do what they claim (most of the return information is most likely deduced from the a priori information provided). But even with a limited spectral resolution and sensitivity, it should be able to identify spectral signatures of typical herbicides and pesticides.
Smartphones are still drastically slower than individual PCs, let alone cloud services.
I know they're overstating the case, and that it's a near-IR spectrometer, not a mass spectrometer. That said, I still like the general concept. Does anyone know whether near-IR spectroscopy can be used for identifying mineral species (for example, between different types of zeolites and the like)? I love rock hunting but many species have similar visual appearances.
And even on the food standpoint I find it interesting... I'm a tropical plant nut, and lots of people I know over on the forum breed unusual varieties of common fruits as well as rare fruits (some of which don't even have scientific names). It's be neat to be able to get a basic compositional profile - no, not "this fruit contains X ppb of this gigantic-complex-unique-protein", but just the major constituents. It'd help, for example, the mango breeders to know if their fruits are compositionally different from the fruit of the parent cultivar.
"You see, Government is a system that is based on weapons." -- Timster
Dihydrogen monoxide (H2O) might not be bad, but fracking certainly is.
You will not be able to determine raw elements with a NIR spectrometer. With a NIR-LWIR spectrometer, you can only identify molecular compounds, because what you are observing is actually the vibration modes of the molecules. In this spectral range, you will have a lot of signature for organic compounds. So you may be able determine if something is made of plastic. Determining the kind is trickier because most plastics are actually very similar and would require a device with higher spectral resolution to make such a determination.
For elementary elements (iron, copper, gold, etc.), you can forget it. That device will not help you.
That actually doesn't sound that bad:
That would hardly be useless. I presume that the person knows whether what they're looking at is a fruit or an alcoholic beverage. It's not a big deal to ask the user to do whatever degree of categorization that they can to help it out. And being able to pick out common drugs? Definitely not useless.
"You see, Government is a system that is based on weapons." -- Timster
You should get one, you will be able to check your meds are not out of date......
You're right, this article is garbage. This may or may not be a neat device and may or may not be capable of doing cool things but you need to go somewhere else to find out. Mass spect would be cool but without some kind of separation up front for all the components, it would just give noise. I don't think they've figured out how to get mass spect this small. Near-IR also sounds suspicious. As an organic/analytical chemist all my life, we've used spectroscopy from radio waves (NMR) to x-rays (crystallography) and everything in between. There's very little structural information to be gleaned in the near-IR region. A lot human tissue is actually clear to near-IR and we're using special dyes that show up in the near-IR to image tumors. So maybe if someone puts those special dyes in your cheese, you could tell with this device. No, this article is garbage.
Thanks for your insights. Still trying to decide whether something like this should go on my wish list ;) (see above for my potential uses).
Don't expect to much of it for the first generation / first product. Once you get a few competitors and iterations on the technology, you can have a serious look at it. I'd also wait to see a view "in-depth technical reviews" with labor-based comparison studies. To satisfy your curiosity, if your budget allows it, it will definitely be worth it (assuming it at least work a little). I expect the results at first to feel a little like translating something in some language with google translate and translating it back with bing.
How accurate, exactly, do you think such a device could be? Obviously it's not going to be pulling out the sort of precision of a professional spectrometer. But you mention, for example, being able to identify the signatures of herbicides and pesticides. Do you mean, for example, "This contains imidacloprid", or more like, "This contains a nicotinoid of some variety"?
It's hard to say without having more detailed information on the spectral range, spectral resolution, illumination source, detector type and sensitivity, and, most importantly, the type of spectrometer. From the description, it seems that it is a diffracting spectrometer, but that again comes in different flavours. Long story short, I can only guestimate the performance of it based on my experience designing such devices with the information they provide. Now, some molecular basis have specific signatures even a low resolution device could identify. Because these molecular basis are shared by various different molecules, it may be difficult to do more as to identify a group such as nicotinoids. And for the same reason you will have a lot of false positives.
This is where the apriori information play an important role. If you are looking at an apple, the spectral database-based/cloud-based analysis program knows what to expect and can raise a warning flag if it sees something which might be a nicotinoid, because that's not expected in the spectra of a "clean" apple. The same analysis program will ignore the warning if you say you are analysing a cigarette. This, btw. may also lead to false negative... but with low spectral resolution, I believe that the cloud-based analysis will play a crucial role. And this is actually the most interesting part of this innovation.
How useful do you think it could be on identifying mineral species - say, distinguishing between different zeolites?
I've never saw an IR spectrometer used for mineralogy or metallurgy. I doubt it can provide you with any significant information in those fields. Other factors you cannot see in vibrational spectroscopy play a too large role.
Or, back to food, if given, say, a mango, to get readings of, say, water, sugar (in general, or specific sugars), fat (in general, or specific categories of fats, or specific fats), protein (in general, or specific categories of proteins, or specific common protiens... obviously it's not going to be able to pull out 5 ppb of Some-Complex-Unique-Protein), common vitamins (generally found in dozens of ppm quantity - some more, some less), minerals (likewise), etc?
This is where I believe the advertisement is way to promising and optimistic. I'd occupy your day to do that on a very expensive and high-performance laboratory IR spectrometer. Under laboratory conditions.
Take this example of sugar spectra from the Agilent website. They don't specify it, but that's most likely 4 cm^-1 resolution. You see that it is possible to identify specific sugar compounds, but also that the spectra are quite alike. Now reduce the spectral resolution to something like 128 cm^-1 and you'll have a hard time identifying the exact type of sugar.
Smartphones are still drastically slower than individual PCs, let alone cloud services.
Most of the time that I'm not at home, my smartphone is exactly as fast as my smartphone plus cloud services, because I don't have internet access for it. I live in the sticks where it's worthless. Any device which requires a cloud connection is a non-starter for me. And I am precisely the target market for this device, if it suited my needs; I have the money, and I want to be able to do what it claims to do.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
But their cloud platform can immediately send your personal data to the DEA. This is one of those things where you look at the ToS very carefully.
Come on AC, be nice. You can't use near-IR to identify unknowns when you have a nearly infinite number of possibilities. There are devices for monitoring reactions using Near IR, but their use requires intimate knowledge of the contributing components and calibration of each one. If some new unknown shows up you don't get enough information from their near IR absorbance to assign identity. I 've been doing this stuff for 40 years so I don't need to read the wiki article and become an instant expert like you. However, I will read the wiki article and see if I can understand why you've been mislead.
I just looked at the article. You owe me an apology.