PORTATIVE OPTICAL SYSTEM FOR DETECTION OF CHEMICAL SUBSTANCES AT TRACE LEVELS IN FOODS AND LIQUIDS

摘要

Foods and drinks adulterants present at trace levels constitute a major threat to human health. Optical spectroscopy has emerged as a promising method to discriminate micro-trace chemicals from naturally occurring molecules in foods and drinks, although often requiring addition of a chemical reagent. A non-invasive and portative trace chemical detection system is described, which comprises a light source (10, 11), a non-volatile memory element to store reference chemical spectral data, a computational unit (44) configured to perform an element-by-element division and a baseline filter. A trace chemical detection method is also disclosed using data server (54) communication to update and add reference chemical spectral data, in order to increase the number of micro-trace chemicals probed.