Smartphone as a photometric sensor for detection of fluoride content in drinking water

Presence of chemical contaminant such as fluoride is a major concern for human health due to the risk of serious health issues such as dental and skeletal fluororis. People from many parts of India even in our North-East are suffering from serious health hazards by unknowingly drinking fluoride content water. Since, this chemicals does not create any physical coloration to water, no efforts has been made for removal. Detection of such chemicals required costly lab-confined spectrophotometer which costs in lakhs. Although visual detection of such chemicals is possible with colorimteric test kits but the problem is that it can't exactly quantify the exact amount of the fluoride content. For exact quantification we need costly laboratory grade tools and requires people with scientific expertise.

As mentioned in the previous posts smartphone finds its applicability in many of the scientific ventures. We have recently demonstrated in a peer reviewed journal (click for more information)the use of smartphone as a photometric sensor for in-field detection of chemical contaminants in drinking water. For example we have considered detection of fluoride in water. The same sensor can be used for all absorption based detection methods. We have used the ambient light sensor of the phone as a light intensity detector and developed the required android app using MIT App inventor cloud based software for rapid computation within the phone.

Still both scientific and computational optimization requires which will be done in the due course of time. the developed sensor can find its usability as a ultra low cost photometer in monitoring water quality parameters in remote and resource poor regions of our country. 

Microscope without lens: Chip-scale microscope with a smartphone

Remove the lens module of your smartphone camera and make it a microscope. A research group from Biophotonics Laboratory at Caltech developed a smartphone microscope without using any lens. The imaging platform is based on the contact imaging or shadow imaging with the power of rigorous image processing capability of the smartphone. 

   

As reported in their research article in the highly acclaimed journal "Lab on a Chip" from royal society of chemistry (Click for more information) the microscope can image blood smears. The chip-scale microscope is demonstrated to image various micron size algae in a pond in the above video.   This work proves the remark "a smartphone can do lots of things besides just clicking a shot".   Please subscribe for more updates...

Cellphone microscope: A microscope that fits to your pocket

We always get fascinated with the beautiful structural life  of the micro-world because the Gods creation looks more beautiful in the sub-micron dimensions. A usual bamboo leaf looks more beautiful with its microscopic structural pattern. Moreover, the sub-microscopic investigation plays a vital role in human health.

Wikimedia commons: By Graeme Bartlett - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0

But most of us are unable to visualize this fascinating unknown world due to requirement of microscopic imaging devices such as a light microscope. Due to its high cost it can't be affordable by individual even a laboratory with low resource settings. 

Wikimedia commons- Center for Biofilm Research, Montana State University, CC BY-SA 4.0