Smartphone digital image colorimetry combined with liquid-liquid and dispersive solid-phase microextraction for the determination of acrylamide and trace elements in food samples from the Omani market.

Acrylamide (AA) is now known to form by the Maillard reaction during industrial food processing, retail, catering and home food preparation at temperatures usually above 120 C and under low moisture conditions. AA was observed to cause DNA damage, chromosome anomalies, and has been classified as a Group 2A carcinogen and Category 2 mutagen for humans. The discovery of AA in heat-treated foods attracted wide attention and challenged researchers to develop and validate rapid, sensitive and cost-effective analytical methods for its quantitation in food samples due to its presence at low concentrations and the complexity of such matrices. One of the most commonly applied analytical techniques for the determination of AA in food is liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS-MS) due to its high selectivity and sensitivity. Yet, due to its high cost and unavailability in many analytical laboratories and developing countries, the need for less-expensive techniques is highly desired. Smartphone digital image colorimetry (SDIC), when combined with a suitable preconcentration technique, can offer high recovery, sensitivity and selectivity