Design and Validation of a Low-Cost Smartphone Based Fluorescence Detection Platform Compared with Conventional Microplate Readers

TL;DR

This paper presents a low-cost, smartphone-based fluorescence detection platform compatible with standard microplates, offering an affordable alternative to traditional expensive microplate readers.

Contribution

It introduces a novel smartphone optical system that replaces costly components with a simple camera, enabling fluorescence detection in laboratory samples.

Findings

The device effectively detects fluorescence comparable to conventional readers.

A relationship between RGB image data and sample concentration is established.

The platform reduces cost and complexity of fluorescence detection.

Abstract

A low cost fluorescence-based optical system is developed for detecting the presence of certain microorganisms and molecules within a diluted sample. A specifically designed device setup compatible with conventional 96 well plates is chosen to create an ideal environment in which a smart phone camera can be used as the optical detector. In comparison with conventional microplate reading machines such as Perkin Elmer Victor Machine, the device presented in this paper is not equipped with expensive elements such as exciter filer, barrier filter and photomultiplier; instead, a phone camera is all needed to detect fluorescence within the sample. The strategy being involved is to determine the relationship between the image color of the sample in RGB color space and the molar concentration of the fluorescence specimen in that sample. This manuscript is a preprint version of work related to a publication in IEEE. The final version may differ from this manuscript.