Tel Aviv 'tricorder' identifies chemical signatures from distance

Prof David Mendlovic of Tel Aviv University’s School of Electrical Engineering and his doctoral student, Ariel Raz, have made the breakthrough tricorder-style device by combining an optical component and image processing software.

“A long list of fields stand to gain from this new technology,” Prof Mendlovic said in a statement. “We predict hyperspectral imaging will play a major role in consumer electronics, the automotive industry, biotechnology, and homeland security.”

Prof Mendlovic and Raz, together with a team of researchers at Unispectral Technologies, patented an optical component based on existing microelectromechanical (MEMS) technology, suitable for mass production and compatible with standard smartphone camera designs. The combination of this optical component and newly designed software are claimed to go further than current smartphone cameras by offering superior imaging performance and hyperspectral imaging capabilities.

Every material object has a hyperspectral signature, its own distinctive chemical fingerprint. Once the camera acquires an image, the data would be further analysed to extract the hyperspectral content at any location in the image.