New mobile tool measures HB without drawing blood

new york — Researchers have developed a way to use smartphone images of a person’s eyelids to assess blood haemoglobin levels — a protein in red blood cells that carries oxygen.

The ability to perform one of the most common clinical lab tests without a blood draw could help reduce the need for in-person clinic visits, the study, published in the Optica journal said.

“Our new mobile health approach paves the way for bedside or remote testing of blood haemoglobin levels for detecting anemia, acute kidney injury and haemorrhages, or for assessing blood disorders such as sickle cell anemia.” said study researcher Young Kim from Purdue University in the US.

The research team used software to transform the built-in camera of a smartphone into a hyperspectral imager that reliably measures haemoglobin levels. To perform a blood haemoglobin measurement with

the new technique, the patient pulls down the inner eyelid to expose the small blood vessels underneath. A healthcare professional or trained person then uses the smartphone app developed by the researchers to take pictures of the eyelids.

A spectral super-resolution algorithm is applied to extract the detailed spectral information from the camera’s images and then another computational algorithm quantifies the blood haemoglobin content by detecting its unique spectral features. —

Our new mobile health approach paves the way for bedside or remote testing of blood haemoglobin levels

Young Kim

Study researcher