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Electronic Tongues: Recent Strategies and Applications

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A special issue of Sensors (ISSN 1424-8220). This special issue belongs to the section "Chemical Sensors".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (15 October 2019) | Viewed by 23169

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Special Issue Editor

Prof. Dr. Wojciech Wróblewski

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Guest Editor

Chair of Medical Biotechnology, Warsaw University of Technology, Noakowskiego 3, 00-664 Warsaw, Poland
Interests: electrochemical sensors; potentiometric sensors; sensor arrays; electronic tongues

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Chemical sensors are simple analytical devices used in modern systems that could replace commonly applied equipment for routine analysis. Thanks to their remarkable selectivity, chemical sensors deliver real-time and online information on the presence of specific analytes in complex samples. Favorable metrological properties, the simplicity of construction and their low cost have resulted in the dynamic development and commercialization of these devices for environmental protection, clinical chemistry, process control, security systems and the automotive industry.

On the other hand, chemical sensors of limited selectivity may be used in the sensor arrays of electronic tongue systems, dedicated to the automatic analysis of complex liquid samples. The measured signals of the sensor arrays form a sample fingerprint carrying an increased amount of information, since the signal of each cross-sensitive sensor is affected by many components. The analysis of the signals obtained from the arrays requires the use of chemometric tools, which results in a sample’s classification or the determination of its individual components. Therefore, electronic tongue systems based on various sensor array designs and chemometric strategies have been successfully exploited in many different fields, ranging from foodstuffs and environmental control, to pharmaceutical and medical diagnostics, as well as process monitoring.

The aim of this Special Issue is to collect recent developments in electronic tongue systems, including various architectures of sensor arrays (classical and hybrid platforms), data treatment strategies as well as specific fields of application.

Prof. Dr. Wojciech Wróblewski
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

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Keywords

Chemical sensors
Sensor arrays
Electronic tongue
Multivariate data analysis
Neural networks
Quality control
Food safety
Medical diagnostics
Environmental analysis
Bioprocess monitoring

Published Papers (6 papers)

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Research

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19 pages, 1766 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Standard Analytical Methods, Sensory Evaluation, NIRS and Electronic Tongue for Sensing Taste Attributes of Different Melon Varieties

by Dzsenifer Németh, Gábor Balázs, Hussein G. Daood, Zoltán Kovács, Zsanett Bodor, John-Lewis Zinia Zaukuu, Viktor Szentpéteri, Zoltán Kókai and Noémi Kappel

Sensors 2019, 19(22), 5010; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/s19225010 - 16 Nov 2019

Cited by 20 | Viewed by 3749

Abstract

Grafting by vegetables is a practice with many benefits, but also with some unknown influences on the chemical composition of the fruits. Our goal was to assess the effects of grafting and storage on the extracted juice of four orange-fleshed Cantaloupe type (Celestial, Donatello, Centro, Jannet) melons and two green-fleshed Galia types (Aikido, London), using sensory profile analysis and analytical instruments: An electronic tongue (E-tongue) and near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS). Both instruments are known for rapid qualitative and quantitative food analysis. Linear discriminant analysis (LDA) was used to classify melons according to their varieties and storage conditions. Partial least square regression (PLSR) was used to predict sensory and standard analytical parameters. Celestial variety had the highest intensity for sensory attributes in Cantaloupe variety. Both green and orange-fleshed melons were discriminated and predicted in LDA with high accuracies (100%) using the E-tongue and NIRS. Galia and Cantaloupe inter-varietal classification with the E-tongue was 89.9% and 82.33%, respectively. NIRS inter-varietal classification was 100% with Celestial variety being the most discriminated as with the sensory results. Both instruments, classified different storage conditions of melons (grafted and self-rooted) with high accuracies. PLSR showed high accuracy for some standard analytical parameters, where significant differences were found comparing different varieties in ANOVA. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Electronic Tongues: Recent Strategies and Applications)

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12 pages, 2428 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Voltammetric Electronic Tongue for the Simultaneous Determination of Three Benzodiazepines

by Anna Herrera-Chacón, Farzad Torabi, Farnoush Faridbod, Jahan B. Ghasemi, Andreu González-Calabuig and Manel del Valle

Sensors 2019, 19(22), 5002; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/s19225002 - 16 Nov 2019

Cited by 16 | Viewed by 2943

Abstract

The presented manuscript reports the simultaneous detection of a ternary mixture of the benzodiazepines diazepam, lorazepam, and flunitrazepam using an array of voltammetric sensors and the electronic tongue principle. The electrodes used in the array were selected from a set of differently modified graphite epoxy composite electrodes; specifically, six electrodes were used incorporating metallic nanoparticles of Cu and Pt, oxide nanoparticles of CuO and WO₃, plus pristine electrodes of epoxy-graphite and metallic Pt disk. Cyclic voltammetry was the technique used to obtain the voltammetric responses. Multivariate examination using Principal Component Analysis (PCA) justified the choice of sensors in order to get the proper discrimination of the benzodiazepines. Next, a quantitative model to predict the concentrations of mixtures of the three benzodiazepines was built employing the set of voltammograms, and was first processed with the Discrete Wavelet Transform, which fed an artificial neural network response model. The developed model successfully predicted the concentration of the three compounds with a normalized root mean square error (NRMSE) of 0.034 and 0.106 for the training and test subsets, respectively, and coefficient of correlation R ≥ 0.938 in the predicted vs. expected concentrations comparison graph. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Electronic Tongues: Recent Strategies and Applications)

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10 pages, 2163 KiB

Open AccessCommunication

Ion Chromatographic Fingerprinting of STC-1 Cellular Response for Taste Sensing

by Marcin Zabadaj, Aleksandra Szuplewska, Maria Balcerzak, Michał Chudy and Patrycja Ciosek-Skibińska

Sensors 2019, 19(5), 1062; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/s19051062 - 2 Mar 2019

Cited by 3 | Viewed by 2964

Abstract

Taste sensing is of great importance in both the pharmaceutical and foodstuff industries, and is currently mainly based on human sensory evaluation. Many approaches based on chemical sensors have been proposed, leading to the development of various electronic tongue systems. However, this approach is limited by the applied recognition methods, which do not consider natural receptors. Biorecognition elements such as taste receptor proteins or whole cells can be involved in the development of taste sensing biosensors usually equipped with various electrochemical transducers. Here, we propose a new approach: intestinal secretin tumor cell line (STC-1) chemosensory cells were applied for taste recognition, and their taste-specific cellular response was decoded from ion chromatographic fingerprints with the use of multivariate data processing by partial least squares discriminant analysis (PLS-DA). This approach could be useful for the development of various non-invasive taste sensing assays, as well as for studying taste transduction mechanisms in vitro. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Electronic Tongues: Recent Strategies and Applications)

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Review

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16 pages, 3052 KiB

Open AccessReview

Critical Evaluation of Laboratory Potentiometric Electronic Tongues for Pharmaceutical Analysis—An Overview

by Małgorzata Łabańska, Patrycja Ciosek-Skibińska and Wojciech Wróblewski

Sensors 2019, 19(24), 5376; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/s19245376 - 5 Dec 2019

Cited by 14 | Viewed by 3476

Abstract

Electronic tongue systems equipped with cross-sensitive potentiometric sensors have been applied to pharmaceutical analysis, due to the possibility of various applications and developing new formulations. Many studies already proved the complementarity between the electronic tongue and classical analysis such as dissolution tests indicated by Pharmacopeias. However, as a new approach to study pharmaceuticals, electronic tongues lack strict testing protocols and specification limits; therefore, their results can be improperly interpreted and inconsistent with the reference studies. Therefore, all aspects of the development, measurement conditions, data analysis, and interpretation of electronic tongue results were discussed in this overview. The critical evaluation of the effectiveness and reliability of constructed devices may be helpful for a better understanding of electronic tongue systems development and for providing strict testing protocols. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Electronic Tongues: Recent Strategies and Applications)

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20 pages, 2504 KiB

Open AccessReview

Electronic Tongues for Inedible Media

by Dmitry Kirsanov, Daniel S. Correa, Gabriel Gaal, Antonio Riul, Maria L. Braunger, Flavio M. Shimizu, Osvaldo N. Oliveira, Tao Liang, Hao Wan, Ping Wang, Ekaterina Oleneva and Andrey Legin

Sensors 2019, 19(23), 5113; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/s19235113 - 22 Nov 2019

Cited by 19 | Viewed by 4893

Abstract

“Electronic tongues”, “taste sensors”, and similar devices (further named as “multisensor systems”, or MSS) have been studied and applied mostly for the analysis of edible analytes. This is not surprising, since the MSS development was sometimes inspired by the mainstream idea that they could substitute human gustatory tests. However, the basic principle behind multisensor systems—a combination of an array of cross-sensitive chemical sensors for liquid analysis and a machine learning engine for multivariate data processing—does not imply any limitations on the application of such systems for the analysis of inedible media. This review deals with the numerous MSS applications for the analysis of inedible analytes, among other things, for agricultural and medical purposes. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Electronic Tongues: Recent Strategies and Applications)

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16 pages, 4187 KiB

Open AccessReview

Voltammetric Electronic Tongues in Food Analysis

by Clara Pérez-Ràfols, Núria Serrano, Cristina Ariño, Miquel Esteban and José Manuel Díaz-Cruz

Sensors 2019, 19(19), 4261; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/s19194261 - 30 Sep 2019

Cited by 31 | Viewed by 4095

Abstract

A critical revision is made on recent applications of voltammetric electronic tongues in the field of food analysis. Relevant works are discussed dealing with the discrimination of food samples of different type, origin, age and quality and with the prediction of the concentration [...] Read more.

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Electronic Tongues: Recent Strategies and Applications)

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