Noninvasive Hemoglobin Measurement using Unmodified Smartphone Camera and White Flash

Edward Wang, Junyi Zhu, William Li, Rajneil Rana, Shwetak Patel

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The new version of HemaApp enables the smartphone to measure hemoglobin with only the use of the white flash led

Abstract

We show that a mobile phone can measure hemoglobin levels using the built-in RGB camera and white LED without modification. Prior work has demonstrated that a smartphone using the built-in RGB camera with the aid of visible and IR lights can achieve a Pearson correlation results between 0.69-0.82 and an RMSE value between 1.26-1.56 g/dL. Our system builds upon the prior work and demonstrates that with only the built-in white LED, the estimation of hemoglobin level has a Pearson correlation of 0.62 with an RMSE of 1.27 g/dL. This extension work demonstrates that it is feasible to measure hemoglobin without using an IR source.