A smartphone app that measures hemoglobin levels using pictures of a person’s inner eyelid may help assess anemia in people with blood disorders such as sickle cell disease, a new study reports. The study, “mHealth spectroscopy of blood hemoglobin with spectral super-resolution,” was published in the journal Optica.
Hemoglobin is the protein that carries oxygen throughout the body in red blood cells. Laboratory tests of blood hemoglobin levels are done routinely as an initial screening for anemia.
“Depending on the hospital setting, it can take a few hours to get results from a blood test. Some situations also may require multiple blood tests, which lead to more blood loss,” Young Kim, a professor of biomedical engineering at Purdue University and the study’s senior author, said in a press release.