Optical methods using smartphone platforms for mycotoxin detection

Mycotoxins are harmful toxins produced by diverse fungi, that appear in food chain due to mold infection of crops, before or post-harvest. Most mycotoxins are chemically stable and persist after food processing producing various types of diseases and poisoning, including cytotoxic, nephrotoxic, neurotoxic damage as well as carcinogenic, mutagenic, immunosuppressive, and estrogenic effects. Thus, there is a significant interest in mycotoxin detection in foodstuff. Although classical analytical techniques can quantify mycotoxins, alternative tools to facilitate the speed of analysis and simplify the operation are desirable. In this sense, the development of optical systems applied to analytical chemistry using smartphones has increased considerably. Smartphones are powerful storage, data processing, and interconnectivity tools which can be used to build low-cost and real-time analytic systems. Their infrastructure offers robust hardware and software platforms for chemical and biochemical measurements that often demand sophisticated laboratory instruments. In this chapter, we have reviewed the current analytical tools coupled with smartphones for mycotoxin detection. Analytical techniques based on visual inspection, such as lateral flow immunoassay, have been the most adapted to smartphone detection, but colorimetric kits and liquid assays were also found. The quantitative characteristics that smartphone detection provides allow detection to achieve lower detection limits in the assays, with simple operation.