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Fake Malaria Meds Meet Their Match in a Handheld Spectrometer: Up to 35 percent of antimalarial drugs are useless. Engineers are combatting this counterfeit menace.
"The new system uses near-infrared (NIR) spectrometry, directing a beam
of NIR light at a pill and recording how the light is absorbed. That
pattern of absorption is a unique spectral signature that reveals the
chemical composition of the pill without damaging it. Until recently,
NIR spectrometry required bulky and expensive tools that limited it to
fields like astronomy and medical imaging. But rapid advances in the
technology have led to cheap and miniaturized devices that enable new
applications."
Source: spectrum.ieee.org
nir spectrometry pill light absorption antimalarial bulky counterfeit