Hasta La Gadget!

Have you ever wondered if the naked stranger on Chatroulette had too much cholesterol in their diet? Well, soon that worry will be a thing of the past thanks to one MIT Grad student. Ming-Zher Poh has devised a way to automatically (and accurately) read basic vital signs using technology as simple as a built-in laptop webcam.

The tech works by measuring and analyzing slight variations in brightness produced by the flow of blood through blood vessels in the face. When compared to a commercially-available, FDA-approved blood-volume pulse sensor, the system produced pulse rates that agreed  within three beats-per-minute.

Which is not bad for a dinky webcam. Conceivably, this technology could be developed into an app utilized by any smart phone with a camera.

In other real-world applications, Doctors could help diagnose patients around the globe via the internet.Vitals could be remotely detected in patients where the very process of taking readings might
be uncomfortable such as with burn victims or newborn babies. Poh has even put forward that this tech might one day be used in a bathroom mirror that could tell the mirror-gazer various vital signs including heart rate, blood pressure, and blood-oxygen levels.