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Oct 8, 2022

A smartphone’s camera and flash could help people measure blood oxygen levels at home

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, information science, mobile phones, robotics/AI

This technique involves having participants place their finger over the camera and flash of a smartphone, which uses a deep-learning algorithm to decipher the blood oxygen levels from the blood flow patterns in the resulting video.


Conditions like asthma or COVID-19 make it harder for bodies to absorb oxygen from the lungs. This leads to oxygen saturation percentages dropping to 90% or below, indicating that medical attention is needed.

In a clinic, doctors monitor oxygen saturation using pulse oximeters — those clips you put over your fingertip or ear. But monitoring oxygen saturation at home multiple times a day could help patients keep an eye on COVID symptoms, for example.

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