Counterfeit drugs are common in many parts of the world. Their existence is extremely dangerous for vulnerable patients who are robbed of their money and their health. Researchers at University of California, Riverside have come up with a way of testing drugs using cheap existing, but slightly modified, video equipment and image recognition tools.
The idea is to film how a powdered drug, mixed with water, undergoes a physical change such as being frozen. Different chemicals freeze differently and these slight changes can actually be detected using standard video cameras and photo analysis software.
The UC Riverside team calls their technology “chronoprinting” because it is used to detect changes in a material over time as some factors change it.
Here’s a video from UC Riverside that gives a good idea of how the technology is used:
Top image: A chronoprint. Credit: Grover Lab/UC Riverside
Study in journal ACS Central Science: Chronoprints: Identifying Samples by Visualizing How They Change over Space and Time…
Via: UC Riverside