WHY NOT use the power of

LIGHT
By Todd Martin Sames

m identification, authentication and detection from y

IMAGINE if you were living in a third world country and were concerned
about the safety of the water. Through the use of a small, low-cost, portable device
you could have the ability to instantly determine if the water was contaminated and
unsafe to drink.
Or, lets say you are in law enforcement and want to determine if that white powder
is baking soda or methamphetamine. Through the use of a light scanner in your car
(possibly incorporated into your phone or tablet) you, as the officer, could quickly
and accurately determine if it was innocent baby powder or insidious
methamphetamine. Today a test lab would be needed to make that determination.
Or, as a hospital administrator, you may be concerned about counterfeit
pharmaceutical drugs being supplied to patients. In fact, there is a light-based
remedy for this as well. If the hospital could easily and inexpensively use light to
monitor the purity of drugs, the problem and the liability associated with it could be
eliminated.

HOW?
All these of these examples and hundreds more are very real issues in our world
today. Utilizing light to determine what something is and is not has been happening
since the 1940s. The scientific community refers to these methods of light-based
identification as spectrophotometry, and the devices used to perform these tests
as spectrophotometers.
Here is how it works (see image below.) A high-quality white light source is
projected onto a sample, in this case, a red leaf. A fiber optic wand captures the
reflected red light from the leaf and focuses it into the spectrophotometer. Inside
the spectrophotometer, the light is transmitted onto a mirror. The mirror focuses the
light onto a prism where the single stream of light is split into the primary visible
spectrum colors. The light is then transmitted onto another mirror which in turn
shines the light into a device called a diffraction grating. The diffraction grating
sends the light as an analog waveform into a computer where the dominant light
frequency (red) is then presented in a graphic format.
The resulting curve and the points that compose it define a unique light signature
for that specific type of red leaf. (Once a library of known substances has been
recorded, it is fairly straight forward to use a spectrophotometer to determine what
the item is by matching the unknown item to the known library of graphs.)

Spectrophotometer

Computer

White light source

Some of the companies who make spectrophotometers today are Agilent, Ocean
Optics, and PerkinElmer to name just a few. This is a multi-billion-dollar market
worldwide. Generally, these are lab-based devices not portable -- that are large
and/or expensive and require a trained professional to use them and to interpret the
data they deliver.

But what if you had smaller application needs? Dr. Tom Furness at the University of
Washington and his independent RAT (rocking and thinking) Lab, have developed
this exact technology.
Their ChromaID scanner is built using low-cost, off-the-shelf parts such as LEDs
(light emitting diodes) and photodiodes. These components are readily available
and are found in cameras, tablets, sensors and other mainstream products.
Here is how Dr. Furnesss technology works (again, see image below.)
The scanner pulses light from the LEDs onto the red leaf. The light from the specific
frequency LEDs is reflected and captured by photodiodes (like in your phone or
digital camera.) That analog stream of photons is converted into a digital data set
of letters and numbers. Each pulse of light generates a digital data set and each
scan pulses the LEDs hundreds or thousands of times. The result is a light(photon)based digital signature representing the red leaf. Much like the spectrophotometer,
a library of known scans is recorded and the unknown substance is matched against
the known light signature for a match (or not.)
This signature is generated by pulsing LEDs at specific frequencies of light and
recording the photon stream using the photodiodes. These waves of photons are

then digitized resulting in hundreds or thousands of unique data points that

characterize each unique item.
ChromaID 12 LED scan head

What Dr. Furness and his team discovered is that almost everything in nature has a
unique optical signature if you look in both the visible and invisible areas of the light
spectrum. For example, a generic aspirin has a different photonic signature,
referred to as a ChromaID signature, from that of a name-brand aspirin.
Rather than look at approximately 400 different frequencies of humanly visible light
as the old technology does, the ChromaID technology uses less than 30 specific
frequencies of light -- some in the visible spectrum and some in the invisible areas
of low ultraviolet and high infrared light. Each scan head contains LEDs that emit
specific frequencies of light. When the light is reflected off of a substance, the
resulting photon stream is captured by a photodiode, much like the way a picture on
your phone is captured. The photon stream information is transformed into a digital
data set that represents that particular substances ChromaID signature.
Once the known original item has its signature recorded in the database with its
own unique ChromaID signature, it can be matched against all similar substances to
verify the accuracy or authenticity of that substance.
The applications for this technology can be almost limitless whether it is used for
identifying food for accuracy or contamination, identifying counterfeit security cards
or currency, or even detecting a skin condition that may be serious.
The matching process uses various algorithms to compare the data immediately,
which provides real-time results (instead of waiting hours or days for lab results.)
One can immediately know whether or not the item scanned is a legitimate item or
a counterfeit item. In addition, there is no need for a lab technician to explain the
results since the data is presented in an easy-to-interpret format on the device
being used such as a tablet or cell phone.

COST?
Traditional spectrophotometers cost thousands of dollars. The cost of this scanning
device can potentially be less than $5. Even now, this technology could be added
to devices in any number of vertical industry applications from medical analysis,
food safety, pharmaceuticals, water quality, process control, and security. There are
even patents applied for using the technology for diamond and gemstone grading.

WHEN?
The last century was that of the electron. In this new century the use of the
photon, and in particular light photons, will become the technology of choice going
forward. As with many emerging technologies, market acceptance and investment
will determine the trajectory of this game-changing ChromalID technology.
__________________________________________________________________________________
This technology for authentication and identification requirements in a small form
factor is available through Visualant, Inc. of Seattle, WA.
ChromalID is a trademarked term for Dr. Furness technology.
All graphics compliments of Visualant, Inc.
Todd Martin Sames is an emerging technology industry veteran with a pointed
interest in the future of identification, authentication, asset management, security
and digital entertainment. Although his expertise is in Sales and Management, hes
a bit of a tech junkie. Hence, he just thought you might want to know about this,
too.