Intelligent Digital Holographic systems to counteract microplastic pollution in marine waters

Marine waters are overwhelmed with tons of plastic debris by now. The ecosystem is cornered by something invisible, but extremely harmful, i.e. microplastic particles. Here, we present how Digital Holography (DH) makes visible what is not, in a label-free/compact manner, with high throughput and adaptability to microfluidic systems. Microplastics can be detected and classified thanks to both DH principle and artificial intelligence, thus ensuring the possibility of conducting campaigns of experiments for microplastics identification and monitoring directly on the spot.