access icon openaccess Smartphone-based analysis of biochemical tests for health monitoring support at home

In the context of home-based healthcare monitoring systems, it is desirable that the results obtained from biochemical tests – tests of various body fluids such as blood and urine – are objective and automatically generated to reduce the number of man-made errors. The authors present the StripTest reader – an innovative smartphone-based interpreter of biochemical tests based on paper-based strip colour using image processing techniques. The working principles of the reader include image acquisition of the colour strip pads using the camera phone, analysing the images within the phone and comparing them with reference colours provided by the manufacturer to obtain the test result. The detection of kidney damage was used as a scenario to illustrate the application of, and test, the StripTest reader. An extensive evaluation using laboratory and human urine samples demonstrates the reader's accuracy and precision of detection, indicating the successful development of a cheap, mobile and smart reader for home-monitoring of kidney functioning, which can facilitate the early detection of health problems and a timely treatment intervention.

Inspec keywords: medical image processing; home computing; patient monitoring; health care; image colour analysis; smart phones; image sensors

Other keywords: smartphone-based analysis; human urine samples; image acquisition; colour strip pads; biochemical tests; striptest reader; treatment intervention; kidney functioning home-monitoring; early health problem detection; innovative smartphone-based interpreter; paper-based strip colour; camera phone; body fluids; home-based healthcare monitoring systems; image processing techniques; smart reader

Subjects: Image sensors; Biology and medical computing; Optical, image and video signal processing; Biomedical measurement and imaging; Mobile radio systems; Computer vision and image processing techniques

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