HemaApp, and it’s an app that can accurately detect levels of haemoglobin in your blood just by shining a light on your finger. Simply pop your finger over your phone’s flash, and HemaApp will analyse the colour of your blood through your skin to give a reading of haemoglobin concentration.
Anemia, which can be caused by malnutrition or parasitic infection, is incredibly common in poorer countries. The World Health Organization estimates that some two billion around the world are anemic. Symptoms including dizziness, weakness, and severe headaches. Those with certain chronic conditions, such as sickle cell anemia, need to be constantly monitored, usually with frequent blood tests.
Researchers at the University of Washington will present a simple anemia-tracking technique using a smartphone and a light source at a conference later this month. The technology was developed in the lab of Shwetak Patel, a professor in the university’s electrical engineering department.
Patel and colleagues found that the camera in a Nexus 5 smartphone could measure hemoglobin by capturing light passing through a person’s finger. The system records video as light from the phone’s flash, a small additional array of LED lights, and an incandescent lightbulb shines through a fingertip. The system was trained to recognize changes in color as blood pumps through the finger that might indicate a deficiency of red blood cells.
HemaApp captures and analyze the color of blood from user finger which is placed on phone camera near flash and change in different lighting condition and absorption of light under different wavelength (chromatic analysis) which is analyzed by a machine learning algorithm which is based on data from clinical study can give the final results on hemoglobin level in blood.
According to the researchers, an anaemia screening using HemaApp on 31 patients ranging from 6 to 77 years old gave a sensitivity and precision of 85.7% and 76.5%. They even found is as accurate as Masimo Pronto, an expensive FDA-approved machine that can measure haemoglobin through a small device that clips to a patient’s finger.
More information : https://ubicomplab.cs.washington.edu/projects/hemaapp
