Liquid testing with your smartphone
Name
3481038.pdf
Description
Published version
Size
1.89 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
d29d22fd4920dfecf415e6540646ce77
Author(s)
Yue, Shichao
Katabi, Dina
Date Issued
2021
Journal
Communications of the ACM
Publisher
Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)
Citation
Yue, Shichao and Katabi, Dina. 2021. "Liquid testing with your smartphone." Communications of the ACM, 64 (10).
Version
Final published version
Abstract
Surface tension is an important property of liquids. It has diverse uses such as testing water contamination, measuring alcohol concentration in drinks, and identifying the presence of protein in urine to detect the onset of kidney failure. Today, measurements of surface tension are done in a lab environment using costly instruments, making it hard to leverage this property in ubiquitous applications. In contrast, we show how to measure surface tension using only a smartphone. We introduce a new algorithm that uses the small waves on the liquid surface as a series of lenses that focus light and generate a characteristic pattern. We then use the phone camera to capture this pattern and measure the surface tension. Our approach is simple, accurate, and available to anyone with a smartphone. Empirical evaluations show that our mobile app can detect water contamination and measure alcohol concentration. Furthermore, it can track protein concentration in the urine, providing an initial at-home test for proteinuria, a dangerous complication that can lead to kidney failure.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory
Terms of Use
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1145/3481038
