Innovative colorimetric thermal study of methylcellulose hydrogel via smartphone imaging

TL;DR

This paper introduces a new smartphone-based method to study the temperature changes in methylcellulose hydrogel using colorimetric analysis.

Contribution

The study introduces two innovative procedures for gelation assessment using smartphone imaging and colorimetric analysis.

Findings

A direct correlation between temperature and blue channel pixel intensity was found in MC hydrogel images.

Variance analysis validated known gelation temperatures, confirming the method's effectiveness.

Histogram analysis showed increased RMSE near gelation points, providing a new gelation indicator.

Abstract

A novel colorimetric analysis of methylcellulose (MC) hydrogel was conducted using a standard smartphone camera to measure its thermo-optical properties. As demonstrated for the first time, the temperature of MC gels was directly determined from photographs by exploiting a unique one-to-one correlation between temperature and mean pixel intensity in the blue channel of RGB images, all color channels showed strong hysteresis. Two innovative procedures for gelation assessment are introduced: variance analysis and histogram analysis with normal distribution fitting. The variance analysis confirms known gelation related temperatures, validating the effectiveness of the new method. Histogram analysis reveals a significant increase in RMSE (root mean square error) near gelation related points, offering a new indicator for gelation status. This methodology underscores the untapped potential of colorimetry to extract valuable data from hydrogels in general and MC gel in particular.

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