Blood Pressure Tracking As Easy As Posting Selfie: What You Need To Know

Acquiring blood pressure reading can now be done in a simple way. This time, measuring the blood pressure comes easy as posting a selfie on social media.

Researchers from the University of Toronto in Canada and the Affiliated Hospital of Hangzhou Normal University in China posted a proof of concept on August 6 on how a patient’s blood pressure can be detected by simply capturing a short video using a smartphone app.

The said group of researchers has been laboring to find a way to track a patient’s blood pressure using one of the most common functions that a smartphone does, the selfie.

Using the process called transdermal optical imaging, the researchers used the variation in the color of the skin as smart camera lights bounce off the skin’s protein at different rates. The changes in the skin color captured by a smartphone camera signify changes in hemoglobin and melanin count.

To ensure the accuracy of the data gathered, 900 pictures must be taken in 30 seconds. These numbers will be used to compare the difference in the color of bounced light from the smartphone camera.

The group of researchers performed the study on 1328 people and managed to acquire an impressive 95% accuracy rate on the result. However, the study was done on European and East Asian people.

Since transdermal optical imaging bases, the result on the changes in skin color captured by the smartphone camera through the light it bounced to the patient’s skin, the level of accuracy could vary for people with darker skin color.

One cannot assume his physical condition unless they are diagnosed by a physician. As of the moment, there are 1.3 billion people with high blood pressure all over the world. Sadly, not all of them are aware of their condition because most of them do not have the habit of seeing their physician.

The transdermal optical imaging is only an avenue for patients to have an idea of how their blood pressure is going. Although it may still have to through innovations and improvements according to the researchers, it is always best to seek the attention of a medical expert.