Computer vision vs. spectrofluorometer-assisted detection of common nitro-explosive components with bola-type PAH-based chemosensors

Computer vision (CV) algorithms are widely utilized in imaging processing for medical and personal electronics applications. In sensorics CV can provide a great potential to quantitate chemosensors' signals. Here we wish to describe a method for the CV-assisted spectrofluorometer-free detection of common nitro-explosive components, e.g. 2,4-dinitrotoluene (DNT) and 2,4,6-trinitrotoluene (TNT), by using polyaromatic hydrocarbon (PAH, PAH = 1-pyrenyl or 9-anthracenyl) – based bola-type chemosensors. The PAH components of these chemical bolas are able to form stable, bright emissive in a visual wavelength region excimers, which allows their use as extended matrices of the RGB colors after imaging and digital processing. In non-polar solvents, the excimers have poor chemosensing properties, while in aqueous solutions, due to the possible micellar formation, these excimers provide “turn-off” fluorescence detection of DNT and TNT in the sub-nanomolar concentrations. A combination of these PAH-based fluorescent chemosensors with the proposed CV-assisted algorithm offers a fast and convenient approach for on-site, real-time, multi-thread analyte detection without the use of fluorometers. Although we focus on the analysis of nitro-explosives, the presented method is a conceptual work describing a general use of CV for quantitative fluorescence detection of various analytes as a simpler alternative to spectrofluorometer-assisted methods.