This article describes the development of a mobile colorimetric analysis tool. The application, called PhotoMetrix, employs the techniques of simple linear correlation for univariate analysis and principal components analysis (PCA) for multivariate exploratory analysis. The image data are captured by the main camera of the device and converted into red, green and blue (RGB) histograms. As regards the application, the iron determinations were performed in vitamin supplements (univariate module) and differentiation of banknotes was performed by PCA (multivariate module). For the iron determinations, three samples of vitamins at concentrations of 14, 40 and 50 mg of iron per tablet were tested and the results were not statistically significant (p > 0.05) compared to the reference method. The differentiation of banknotes was performed on Brazilian and Argentinean banknotes. The results showed clustering of the same types of banknotes, and through the loadings graph it was possible to observe the variables through the formation of clusters.

No abstract

No abstract

The steady advances in technology employed in smartphones, coupled with the high availability and the ease access to these devices, increased the interest in applying it to analytical purposes. The main goal is to develop simple, fast, and low-cost analytical methods, generating immediate results. Different analytical strategies using smartphones have been proposed to identify or determine different analytes in a wide range of matrices. Some of them use the smartphone to capture the images, to process them, and to provide the analytical results. Others use this device just for image acquisition. In this context, this review aimed to relate previous works that used smartphones to acquire images for analytical purposes, with a special focus on PhotoMetrix application, which is a tool for chemical analysis. This application allows the decomposition of digital images acquired by smartphone cameras and to process them within the same device, allowing in situ chemical analysis.

No abstract