Sensors, Vol. 22, Pages 4984: Towards an Automatic Pollen Detection System in Ambient Air Using Scattering Functions in the Visible Domain

Sensors, Vol. 22, Pages 4984: Towards an Automatic Pollen Detection System in Ambient Air Using Scattering Functions in the Visible Domain Sensors doi: 10.3390/s22134984 Authors: Jean-Baptiste Renard Houssam El Azari Jérôme Richard Johann Lauthier Jérémy Surcin Pollen grains strongly affect human health by inducing allergies. Although the monitoring of airborne pollens particles is of major importance, the current measurement methods are manually conducted and are expensive, limiting the number of monitoring stations. Thus, there is a need for relatively low-cost instruments that can work automatically. The possible detection of pollen in urban ambient air (Paris, France) has been reported using the LOAC optical aerosol counter. These measurements indicate that the pollen grains and their nature could be determined using their scattering properties. For this purpose, the scattering functions (intensity and linear polarization) of 21 different airborne pollens were established in the laboratory using a PROGRA2 instrument. The linear polarization curves were close together, with a maximum polarization lower than 10% in the red domain and 5% in the green domain. The variability from one sample to another was partly due to the different sizes of the grains. An instrument with an absolute accuracy of about ±1% for polarization measurements should then be needed, coupled with a counting instrument to take into account the effects of size. On the o...
Source: Sensors - Category: Biotechnology Authors: Tags: Article Source Type: research