A new study suggests the ability to measure blood pressure just by uploading a selfie. It sounds almost impossible but some researchers at the University of Toronto, Canada say it is a possibility.
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In affiliation with the Hospital of Hangzhou Normal University, China they say they can detect blood pressure by a short video from an app.
The researchers are using a process called transdermal optical imaging. They used the variations in the colour of a patient’s skin combined with how the smart camera light bounce off the protein’s in their skin at different rates. These skin colour changes detected by the smartphone camera will signify the change in melanin count and haemoglobin.
They would need a combination of 900 pictures taken in 30 seconds to ascertain the accuracy of the data gathered. The pictures will be compared to detect the differences in the colour of light that bounced from the smartphone camera.
Selfies Brings Technology Closer To Health
They carried out the study on 1328 people so far and they recorded an accuracy rate of 95%. But the study has only been done on East Asian and European people. It is not certain if it will work on people of other races, like Africans.
There is a chance that the success rate might be lower for people with darker skin. This is because the transdermal optical imaging bases its result on the changes in skin colour captured by the smartphone camera. Light won’t probably bounce to the skin of darker-skinned people in the same way.
However, it sounds like a long process so it is still advisable to visit a doctor for a proper diagnosis for any condition. Records say that about 1.3 billion people live with high blood pressure in the world. Although, most of it goes undetected because people don’t visit their doctors often enough.
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