Smartphone app for detection of anemia using photos
All other point-of-care anemia detection tools require external equipment.
(Web Desk) - Anemia is the most common blood disorder, affecting an estimated 2 billion people who lack enough healthy red blood cells or hemoglobin. It’s usually diagnosed by blood tests, but a new Smartphone app can provide a diagnosis just from a photo of people’s fingernails.
The app is the work of a team of researchers from Emory University. In a study published Tuesday in Nature Communications, they explain how they trained an algorithm to analyze the color of a person’s fingernail beds in a smartphone photo to determine the level of hemoglobin in their blood.
First, they took photos of the fingernail beds of 227 people, all of whom had their hemoglobin levels measured through a CBC. They then created an algorithm that could convert a fingernail bed color to a hemoglobin level. When they tested this algorithm on 100 new subjects, they found it was accurate enough to serve as an effective anemia screening tool.
“All other ‘point-of-care’ anemia detection tools require external equipment, and represent trade-offs between invasiveness, cost, and accuracy,” researcher Wilbur Lam said in a press release. “This is a standalone app whose accuracy is on par with currently available point-of-care tests without the need to draw blood.”
