Smartphone Enabled Atrial Fibrillation Monitoring by Facial Skin Tone
January 10, 2017 | Terry Sharrer
Wilhem Einthoven’s first electrocardiograph in 1903 required five operators, weighed nearly 600 lbs., and required that the patient have both hands and one foot in buckets of salt water. Some of today’s ECGs are about the size of a portable, external hard drive, though with a considerable length of leads, and an attending laptop computer. However, a group of researchers at the Chinese University of Hong Kong have developed a smartphone app that relies on the camera to detect changes in facial skin color to indicate atrial fibrillation. Called “Cardiio Rhythm,” the app has about eight percent lower accuracy rate than conventional ECG, but advances in smartphone cameras may narrow that gap. MORE
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