US Patent 9201068 Bioelectronic tongue for food allergy detection

The present invention is directed to a method and apparatus that satisfies the need for a bioelectronic tongue for food allergy detection. The method of detecting concentration of food allergen incorporates antibodies into an electronic tongue to create a bioelectronic tongue. Additionally the method uses impedance, capacitance, and/or other related electrochemical methods for detecting analyte in complex media. Furthermore the method additionally includes methods to subtract out non-specific interactions. The method also subtracts non-specific interactions. The device/apparatus is a Bioelectronic Tongue for detecting allergen in diluted food samples. The device includes: a sensor array; an impedance or capacitance analyzer; a preprocessor; a feature extractor; a pattern recognizer; and an output device indicating an allergen concentration. In order to implement the method of detecting food allergens on a bioelectronic tongue a computer readable medium containing an executable program is used for performing the analysis of a food sample. The executable program performs the acts of: preprocessing data from an impedance analyzer; extracting a feature pattern; recognizing a pattern of features of data representing a concentration of food allergen contained is the food sample; and outputs allergen concentration data.