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939 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Flavonoid and Antioxidant Capacity of Propolis Prediction Using Near Infrared Spectroscopy

by Eddy Betances-Salcedo, Isabel Revilla, Ana M. Vivar-Quintana and M. Inmaculada González-Martín

Sensors 2017, 17(7), 1647; https://doi.org/10.3390/s17071647 - 18 Jul 2017

Cited by 29 | Viewed by 5507

Abstract

The use of propolis as a dietary supplement or as an ingredient in different food products is increasing, due to its antioxidant and bactericidal properties. These nutritional properties directly depend on its phenolic composition. For this reason, this study analysed the total contents [...] Read more.

The use of propolis as a dietary supplement or as an ingredient in different food products is increasing, due to its antioxidant and bactericidal properties. These nutritional properties directly depend on its phenolic composition. For this reason, this study analysed the total contents of flavones and flavonols, flavanones and dihydroflavonols, and the antioxidant capacity by using the methods of ABTS and linoleic acid/β-carotene in 99 samples of propolis from Spain and Chile. A rapid method was developed for quantifying these parameters in raw propolis using near infrared (NIR) spectroscopy with a remote reflectance fibre-optic probe applied directly to the ground-up sample. The models developed allow for the determination of the total flavones and flavonols (0–183 mg quercetin/g propolis and 0–72 mg rutin/g propolis), of the total flavanones and dihydroflavonols (9–109 mg pinocembrin/g propolis extract), and of its antioxidant capacity by the ABTS method based on the reduction of the 2.2-azinobis(3-ethylbenzothiazoline-6-sulfonic acid) radical cation(0–3212.6 nmol Trolox/mg of propolis) and of linoleic acid/β-carotene (22–86% inhibition). The NIR spectroscopy models were applied in external validation to different samples of the calibration group, which led to the conclusion that the methods developed provide significantly identical data to the initial chemical data of reference. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Infrared Detectors)

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3262 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Air Flow Detection in Crude Oil by Infrared Light

by Guilherme Dutra, Cicero Martelli, Marco José Da Silva, Rodolfo L. Patyk and Rigoberto E. M. Morales

Sensors 2017, 17(6), 1278; https://doi.org/10.3390/s17061278 - 3 Jun 2017

Cited by 12 | Viewed by 6674

Abstract

In this paper, we used infrared light in the range of 8–12 μm to develop and test an optical imaging system to detect air bubbles flowing in oil. The system basically comprises a broadband light source and a 31 × 32 thermopile array [...] Read more.

In this paper, we used infrared light in the range of 8–12 μm to develop and test an optical imaging system to detect air bubbles flowing in oil. The system basically comprises a broadband light source and a 31 × 32 thermopile array to generate images. To analyze the effects related to light absorption, reflection, and refraction on air-oil boundaries, a numerical model was developed and the predominance of the refraction instead of the absorption in bubbles with diameters below a certain critical value was observed. The IR region of the electromagnetic spectrum has both optical and thermic behavior. To understand the limits of each effect on the oil flow imaging, a study of the influence of temperature variation on the petroleum optical detection was performed. The developed optical imaging system allowed the detection of air flow in static oil and in oil-air two-phase flow. With the presented system, it was possible to achieve images through up to 12 mm of oil volumes, but this may be enhanced by the use of optimized IR sources and detectors. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Infrared Detectors)

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1842 KiB

Open AccessArticle

A Robust 96.6-dB-SNDR 50-kHz-Bandwidth Switched-Capacitor Delta-Sigma Modulator for IR Imagers in Space Instrumentation

by Michele Dei, Stepan Sutula, Jose Cisneros, Ernesto Pun, Richard Jan Engel Jansen, Lluís Terés and Francisco Serra-Graells

Sensors 2017, 17(6), 1273; https://doi.org/10.3390/s17061273 - 2 Jun 2017

Cited by 3 | Viewed by 7321

Abstract

Infrared imaging technology, used both to study deep-space bodies’ radiation and environmental changes on Earth, experienced constant improvements in the last few years, pushing data converter designers to face new challenges in terms of speed, power consumption and robustness against extremely harsh operating [...] Read more.

Infrared imaging technology, used both to study deep-space bodies’ radiation and environmental changes on Earth, experienced constant improvements in the last few years, pushing data converter designers to face new challenges in terms of speed, power consumption and robustness against extremely harsh operating conditions. This paper presents a 96.6-dB-SNDR (Signal-to-Noise-plus-Distortion Ratio) 50-kHz-bandwidth fourth-order single-bit switched-capacitor delta-sigma modulator for ADC operating at 1.8 V and consuming 7.9 mW ﬁt for space instrumentation. The circuit features novel Class-AB single-stage switched variable-mirror ampliﬁers (SVMAs) enabling low-power operation, as well as low sensitivity to both process and temperature deviations for the whole modulator. The physical implementation resulted in a 1.8-mm²chip integrated in a standard 0.18-µm 1-poly-6-metal (1P6M) CMOS technology, and it reaches a 164.6-dB Schreier ﬁgure of merit from experimental SNDR measurements without making use of any clock bootstrapping,analogcalibration,nordigitalcompensationtechnique. Whencoupledtoa2048×2048 IR imager, the current design allows more than 50 frames per minute with a resolution of 16 effective number of bits (ENOB) while consuming less than 300 mW. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Infrared Detectors)

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1329 KiB

Open AccessArticle

A Monitoring System for Laying Hens That Uses a Detection Sensor Based on Infrared Technology and Image Pattern Recognition

by Mauro Zaninelli, Veronica Redaelli, Fabio Luzi, Valentino Bontempo, Vittorio Dell’Orto and Giovanni Savoini

Sensors 2017, 17(6), 1195; https://doi.org/10.3390/s17061195 - 24 May 2017

Cited by 22 | Viewed by 8441

Abstract

In Italy, organic egg production farms use free-range housing systems with a big outdoor area and a flock of no more than 500 hens. With additional devices and/or farming procedures, the whole flock could be forced to stay in the outdoor area for [...] Read more.

In Italy, organic egg production farms use free-range housing systems with a big outdoor area and a flock of no more than 500 hens. With additional devices and/or farming procedures, the whole flock could be forced to stay in the outdoor area for a limited time of the day. As a consequence, ozone treatments of housing areas could be performed in order to reduce the levels of atmospheric ammonia and bacterial load without risks, due by its toxicity, both for hens and workers. However, an automatic monitoring system, and a sensor able to detect the presence of animals, would be necessary. For this purpose, a first sensor was developed but some limits, related to the time necessary to detect a hen, were observed. In this study, significant improvements, for this sensor, are proposed. They were reached by an image pattern recognition technique that was applied to thermografic images acquired from the housing system. An experimental group of seven laying hens was selected for the tests, carried out for three weeks. The first week was used to set-up the sensor. Different templates, to use for the pattern recognition, were studied and different floor temperature shifts were investigated. At the end of these evaluations, a template of elliptical shape, and sizes of 135 × 63 pixels, was chosen. Furthermore, a temperature shift of one degree was selected to calculate, for each image, a color background threshold to apply in the following field tests. Obtained results showed an improvement of the sensor detection accuracy that reached values of sensitivity and specificity of 95.1% and 98.7%. In addition, the range of time necessary to detect a hen, or classify a case, was reduced at two seconds. This result could allow the sensor to control a bigger area of the housing system. Thus, the resulting monitoring system could allow to perform the sanitary treatments without risks both for animals and humans. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Infrared Detectors)

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7455 KiB

Open AccessArticle

A Method of Sky Ripple Residual Nonuniformity Reduction for a Cooled Infrared Imager and Hardware Implementation

by Yiyang Li, Weiqi Jin, Shuo Li, Xu Zhang and Jin Zhu

Sensors 2017, 17(5), 1070; https://doi.org/10.3390/s17051070 - 8 May 2017

Cited by 6 | Viewed by 4379

Abstract

Cooled infrared detector arrays always suffer from undesired ripple residual nonuniformity (RNU) in sky scene observations. The ripple residual nonuniformity seriously affects the imaging quality, especially for small target detection. It is difficult to eliminate it using the calibration-based techniques and the current [...] Read more.

Cooled infrared detector arrays always suffer from undesired ripple residual nonuniformity (RNU) in sky scene observations. The ripple residual nonuniformity seriously affects the imaging quality, especially for small target detection. It is difficult to eliminate it using the calibration-based techniques and the current scene-based nonuniformity algorithms. In this paper, we present a modified temporal high-pass nonuniformity correction algorithm using fuzzy scene classification. The fuzzy scene classification is designed to control the correction threshold so that the algorithm can remove ripple RNU without degrading the scene details. We test the algorithm on a real infrared sequence by comparing it to several well-established methods. The result shows that the algorithm has obvious advantages compared with the tested methods in terms of detail conservation and convergence speed for ripple RNU correction. Furthermore, we display our architecture with a prototype built on a Xilinx Virtex-5 XC5VLX50T field-programmable gate array (FPGA), which has two advantages: (1) low resources consumption; and (2) small hardware delay (less than 10 image rows). It has been successfully applied in an actual system. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Infrared Detectors)

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3790 KiB

Open AccessArticle

A Hierarchical Framework Combining Motion and Feature Information for Infrared-Visible Video Registration

by Xinglong Sun, Tingfa Xu, Jizhou Zhang and Xiangmin Li

Sensors 2017, 17(2), 384; https://doi.org/10.3390/s17020384 - 16 Feb 2017

Cited by 9 | Viewed by 4703

Abstract

In this paper, we propose a novel hierarchical framework that combines motion and feature information to implement infrared-visible video registration on nearly planar scenes. In contrast to previous approaches, which involve the direct use of feature matching to find the global homography, the [...] Read more.

In this paper, we propose a novel hierarchical framework that combines motion and feature information to implement infrared-visible video registration on nearly planar scenes. In contrast to previous approaches, which involve the direct use of feature matching to find the global homography, the framework adds coarse registration based on the motion vectors of targets to estimate scale and rotation prior to matching. In precise registration based on keypoint matching, the scale and rotation are used in re-location to eliminate their impact on targets and keypoints. To strictly match the keypoints, first, we improve the quality of keypoint matching by using normalized location descriptors and descriptors generated by the histogram of edge orientation. Second, we remove most mismatches by counting the matching directions of correspondences. We tested our framework on a public dataset, where our proposed framework outperformed two recently-proposed state-of-the-art global registration methods in almost all tested videos. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Infrared Detectors)

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1690 KiB

Open AccessArticle

THz Pyro-Optical Detector Based on LiNbO₃ Whispering Gallery Mode Microdisc Resonator

by Alessandro Cosci, Matteo Cerminara, Gualtiero Nunzi Conti, Silvia Soria, Giancarlo C. Righini and Stefano Pelli

Sensors 2017, 17(2), 258; https://doi.org/10.3390/s17020258 - 28 Jan 2017

Cited by 5 | Viewed by 5036

Abstract

This study analyzes the capabilities of a LiNbO₃ whispering gallery mode microdisc resonator as a potential bolometer detector in the THz range. The resonator is theoretically characterized in the stationary regime by its thermo-optic and thermal coefficients. Considering a Q-factor of 10 [...] Read more.

This study analyzes the capabilities of a LiNbO₃ whispering gallery mode microdisc resonator as a potential bolometer detector in the THz range. The resonator is theoretically characterized in the stationary regime by its thermo-optic and thermal coefficients. Considering a Q-factor of 10⁷, a minimum detectable power of 20 μW was evaluated, three orders of magnitude above its noise equivalent power. This value opens up the feasibility of exploiting LiNbO₃ disc resonators as sensitive room-temperature detectors in the THz range. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Infrared Detectors)

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Review

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4512 KiB

Open AccessReview

A Brief Review of OPT101 Sensor Application in Near-Infrared Spectroscopy Instrumentation for Intensive Care Unit Clinics

by Ting Li, Fulin Zhong, Boan Pan, Zebin Li, Chong Huang and Zishan Deng

Sensors 2017, 17(8), 1701; https://doi.org/10.3390/s17081701 - 25 Jul 2017

Cited by 27 | Viewed by 9614

Abstract

The optoelectronic sensor OPT101 have merits in advanced optoelectronic response characteristics at wavelength range for medical near-infrared spectroscopy and small-size chip design with build-in trans-impedance amplifier. Our lab is devoted to developing a series of portable near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) devices embedded with OPT101 [...] Read more.

The optoelectronic sensor OPT101 have merits in advanced optoelectronic response characteristics at wavelength range for medical near-infrared spectroscopy and small-size chip design with build-in trans-impedance amplifier. Our lab is devoted to developing a series of portable near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) devices embedded with OPT101 for applications in intensive care unit clinics, based on NIRS principle. Here we review the characteristics and advantages of OPT101 relative to clinical NIRS instrumentation, and the most recent achievements, including early-diagnosis and therapeutic effect evaluation of thrombus, noninvasive monitoring of patients' shock severity, and fatigue evaluation. The future prospect on OPT101 improvements in noninvasive clinical applications is also discussed. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Infrared Detectors)

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