A new application uses a smartphone camera to infer the left ventricular ejection fraction of the heart, thereby opening the door to measure heart health without undergoing an ultrasound.
The app was developed by a team of researchers, which includes engineers from Caltech in Pasadena, Calif., Huntington Medical Research Institute in Pasadena and University of Southern California in Los Angeles. The app infers LVEF by measuring the amount of skin on the user's neck that is displaced by the carotid artery as blood pumps through it.
The researchers tested the app with the help of 72 volunteers between the ages of 20 and 92 years at an outpatient MRI facility. They held iPhones against the volunteers' necks for one to two minutes. The volunteers then underwent an MRI.
Researchers examined the heart health measured by the MRI and the app. The measurements made by smartphone had a margin of error of ±19.1 percent compared with those done in an MRI.
The researchers detailed their findings in the Journal of Critical Care Medicine.