Eur. Phys. J. Plus (2018) 133: 350
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjp/i2018-12190-y

Regular Article

Searching and identifying microplastics in marine environment by digital holography^⋆

¹ Istituto di Scienze Applicate e Sistemi Intelligenti (ISASI-CNR), Via Campi Flegrei 34, 80078, Pozzuoli (NA), Italy
² Department of Integrative Marine Ecology - Stazione Zoologica Anton Dohrn, Villa Comunale, 80121, Napoli, Italy

^* e-mail: p.ferraro@isasi.cnr.it

Received: 29 March 2018
Accepted: 13 July 2018
Published online: 5 September 2018

Abstract

Microplastics (MP) have gained enormous attention in the last years as they are among the major contaminants of soil and oceans, able to insert themselves in the food chain and cause severe damage to plants life, fauna and human health. Many techniques have been proposed to analyze the abundance, concentration and presence of such material in water, but data are still incomplete. Here, we propose digital holography (DH) as a non-invasive technique to search for and reconstruct the shape of different types of MP. We prove DH is a suitable tool for identifying MP also in the presence of other objects in water, such as diatoms.