Food-related health problems such as food allergies, obesity, diabetes and cardiovascular disease have grown to epidemic proportions and are taking a heavy toll on our society and our health systems. Globally about 35 % of adults are overweight, with half a billion of them obese. Obesity is affecting people at ever younger ages: today 43 million preschool children or nearly 7 % of all under-fives are overweight. Also, food authenticity is a huge problem in many developing countries. The world needs new, easy tools for managing these serious problems.

This in mind, Spectral Engines has developed a novel spectral sensing platform that offers unique benefits in many applications, such as food sensing and analysis. The Food Scanner solution concept utilizes the world’s smallest true NIR spectral sensing module, advanced algorithms, cloud-connectivity and a vast material library to reveal the fat, protein, sugar and total energy content of food items at good accuracy. We utilize well-proven infrared spectroscopic methods for material detection, giving us high measurement performance in compact size. The solution is truly portable and easy to accommodate to other applications, both industrial and consumer.

The first realization of the analyzer device was awarded the Photonics Prism Award in detectors and sensors category at Photonics West 2016 in February. Based on this design, a cloud platform for both device management and analysis algorithms was developed. Finally, a mobile app was made to manage the user experience, giving relevant information to the user in less than a second.

Should you find this topic interesting and would like to discuss how we could help you in your material sensing applications, come meet us at Photonics West 2017 in San Francisco and see our NM modules (with the new NM2.5 introduced) and the Food Scanner device in action! Or just drop us a note through our contact form on the right. In the meantime, go check our new video which can already answer many questions you might have!