Researchers have developed a smartphone app that could allow people to screen for Alzheimer’s disease, ADHD and other neurological diseases and disorders by recording closeups of their eye.
The app uses a near-infrared camera, which is built into newer smartphones for facial recognition, along with a regular selfie camera to track how a person’s pupil changes in size. These pupil measurements could be used to assess a person’s cognitive condition.
The technology was presented at the ACM Computer Human Interaction Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems in New Orleans.
Lead author Colin Barry said: “While there is still a lot of work to be done, I am excited about the potential for using this technology to bring neurological screening out of clinical lab settings and into homes.
“We hope that this opens the door to novel explorations of using smartphones to detect and monitor potential health problems earlier on.”
Image credit | Jacob Yount and Adam Kenney