Scientists are developing new things to make everything easier in this modern age. From asthma to covid-19, there are many conditions that require multiple measurements of oxygen in the blood. Currently these measurements are done with pulse oximeters. Although sometimes it can complicate the test process.
To simplify this process, scientists have created a smartphone app, which can measure oxygen levels in the blood using the phone’s camera and flash. Researchers from the University of Washington and the University of California, San Diego. observed during testing that a smartphone can detect up to 70 percent of blood oxygen levels.
That’s the minimum amount that a pulse oximeter can detect. The new method requires the user to hold their finger over the smartphone’s camera and flash before taking a video, after which a deep-learning algorithm captures the footage. It helps detect the level of oxygen in the blood. To test the application, the researchers selected six participants between the ages of 20 and 34. Each person wore an oximeter on one finger of their hand and then placed the other finger of the same hand over the smartphone’s camera and flash.
The camera records video, says study author Edward Weng. Each time your heart beats, fresh blood flows through the area that is illuminated by the flash. The camera records how much the blood absorbs the light from the flash in the three measured channels: red, green and blue. The resulting extreme level predictions are then fed into a deep learning model. Over a period of 15 minutes, each person breathed in an artificial atmosphere of oxygen and nitrogen, so that their oxygen levels gradually decreased, after which The smartphone accurately marked the oxygen level.