June 2024
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Color perception conveys visual information as well as esthetic experience in personal, academic, and occupational settings. In biomedicine, colorimetric point-of-care devices offer rapid, low-cost diagnosis and health monitoring based on optical distinction of interacting biomarkers labeled by e.g., gold nanoparticles. Reliable evaluation and accurate interpretation of readouts from nanoparticle-based colorimetric assays depends on consistent perception of quantitative color attributes such as hue, chromaticity, brightness, and saturation. Yet color perception is highly subjective and varies widely as a result of physical features such as lighting, local environment, and extinction mode as well as biological factors that include genetics, health, and age. This chapter examines contributions of gold nanoparticle size and shape, illumination, sample environment, signal processing, and color vision deficit on quantitative perceptual color difference in order to coordinate a rational framework for design and implementation of gold nanoparticles in biomedical devices to enhance differentiation of analyte-induced changes in nanoparticle-supported color.