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Potentials of smartphones for biological researches. Part 3: Digital cameras

Abstract:

Modern smartphones possess powerful digital cameras that are rivaled with semiprofessional equipment. When coupled to phone processing and communicating services it widens the range of potential uses in researches. In this paper, we review the potentialities of these cameras and apps from worldwide published experiences analysis. The ability to read and register barcodes or Quick Response codes can be used as a marking or tagging method. Different apps can perform advanced morphometric analysis from captured images, for physical measuring, pattern analysis, or automated species or individual recognition. Using relatively simple external devices the field of portable microscopy has been developed. The sensor provides 8 or 16 bits in primary color channels that made possible their use in colorimetric, photometry, and spectrometry for bio analytic applications detecting and assessing the concentration of chemical substances, monitoring air quality, water turbidity of soil color. They have been used also for ultraviolet radiation monitoring. Motion activation and a video recording made possible their use in behavioral studies. All this range of applications and potentialities can turn smartphones into an important and versatile research instrument.