Sunday, December 21, 2008

Cellphone hacked to analyze blood, detect diseases on the spot


Not that the whole using-cellphones-for-disease-detection is completely fresh, but the latest handset hack for medical purposes is still mighty impressive. UCLA researcher Dr. Aydogan Ozcan has essentially converted a standard cellphone into a portable blood tester of sorts, which is capable of detecting HIV, malaria and various other illnesses. Put as simply as possible, the device works by analyzing blood cells that are placed on an integrated off-the-shelf camera sensor and lit up with a filtered light source. Said light source exposes unique qualities of the cells, and from there, the doc's homegrown software interprets the data and determines what's what. So, has anyone given this guy the main line to NTT DoCoMo, or what?


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