An open-source smartphone app for the quantitative evaluation of thin-layer chromatographic analyses in medicine quality screening

Design of a locally producible box for photographing TLC plates under UV illumination

In TLC analysis with the GPHF Minilab, the spots of the APIs are most commonly visualized by their fluorescence quenching under UV illumination. For photography of such TLC plates under standardized conditions, the 3D-printed cradle described by Yu et al.41 was modified here with three aims: (1) creating a design which is locally producible in low-resource settings; (2) better protection of the UV-illuminated TLC plate from ambient light, to improve image quality; (3) usability with smartphones of different sizes. Several designs were developed and tested, resulting