Picturing Blood Pressure
October 23, 2018 | Terry Sharrer
A research collaboration between GE Global Research, Michigan State University and the University of Rochester proposes that blood pressure can be measured from a smartphone video scan of the face or hands. Here’s how it works: “The natural light in a room penetrates just below the skin’s surface. Humans can’t see this, but video cameras like those on most mobile phones or tablets can. The algorithm needs just several seconds of close-up footage of a face or hand to extract pulsation information based on faint skin-color shifts caused by changes in blood volume as it courses underneath the skin. ‘The color variation is generally too subtle for the naked eye to detect, but not for the algorithm,. . . ” MORE
Image Credit: Lalit K. Mestha, a principal engineer at GE Global Research