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Washington: Inspired by
an iPhone application that also monitors heartbeats, a researcher
is now tweaking the smart phone to act as a cutting-edge
diagnostic tool.
Developed by Ki Chon, professor and head of biomedical engineering
and his team at the Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI), US, the
smart phone application measures heartbeats and respiration rate,
among others, using the phone's built-in video camera.
"Imagine a technician in a nursing home who is able to go into a
patient's room, place the patient's finger on the camera of a
tablet, and in that one step capture all their vital signs," (as
accurately as standard monitors), Chon said.
"This gives a patient the ability to carry an accurate
physiological monitor anywhere, without additional hardware beyond
what's already included in many consumer mobile phones," the
authors write, reports the journal IEEE Transactions on Biomedical
Engineering.
The application, developed by Chon and counterparts Yitzhak
Mendelson, Domhnull Granquist-Fraser and Christopher Scully,
analyzes video clips recorded while the patient's fingertip is
pressed against the lens of the phone's camera, according to a WPI
statement.
As the camera's light penetrates the skin, it reflects off pulsing
blood in the finger; the application is able to correlate subtle
shifts in the colour of the reflected light with changes in the
patient's vital signs.
To test for accuracy, volunteers at WPI donned the standard
monitoring devices now in clinical use for measuring respiration,
pulse rate, heart rhythm and blood oxygen content. Simultaneously,
the volunteers pressed a finger onto the camera of a Motorola
Droid phone.
Subsequent analysis of the data showed that Chon's new smart phone
monitor was as accurate as the traditional devices. While this
study was done on a Droid, Chon said the technology is easily
adaptable to most smart phones with an embedded video camera.
Furthermore, since the new technology can measure heart rhythm,
Chon believes the smart-phone application could be used to detect
a trial fibrillation (AF), which is the most common form of
cardiac arrhythmia (irregular heartbeats).
Chon and colleagues are also at work developing a version of the
mobile monitoring technology for use on video-equipped tablets
like the iPad. A patent application for the technology has been
filed.
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