| abstract |
A portable handheld feature analyzer (300) for analyzing chemical compositions in real time or near real time is disclosed. The analyzer (300) may include a portable housing (304), at least one optical computing device (312) disposed within the portable housing (304) to monitor a sample (310), said at least one optical computing device (312 ) has at least one integrated computational element configured to interact optically with the sample (310) and thus generate optically interacting light, at least one detector (212, 216; 420) arranged to receive the optically interacted light and generate a signal from output corresponding to a characteristic of the sample (310), and a signal processor (304) communicatively coupled to said at least one detector (212, 216; 420) to receive the output signal, the signal processor (314) It is configured to determine the characteristic of the sample (310) and to provide an output signal resulting indicative of the characteristic of the sample (310). |