Smartphone cameras could be used to monitor liver disease patients at home by identifying signs of jaundice in the eye, according to a study.
Researchers at University College London and the Royal Free Hospital found a smartphone camera was able to pick up changes in skin tone and eye colour that require patients to seek medical help.
They developed a smartphone app that took photos of the forehead, white of the eye and lower eyelid of 66 patients with cirrhosis – the long-term scarring of the liver.
The camera was particularly effective at detecting levels of bilirubin, a yellowish pigment that indicates jaundice caused by poor liver function.
Advanced cirrhosis causes patients’ skin and eyes to become more yellow as the bilirubin concentration in the blood becomes higher.
After calibrating the images for lighting conditions, they were analysed and used to train an algorithm that could predict bilirubin level based on the degree of yellowness in the image.
These predictions were then checked against blood test data, with images from the white of the eye providing the strongest correlation.
Bilirubin levels are currently checked by a blood test performed by a medical professional, which then has to be analysed. This is usually done in a hospital setting.
Liver disease is the third most common cause of working-age premature death in the UK.
The study’s authors hope that the method could eventually reduce pressure on doctors and nurses by allowing patients to be monitored at home.
Raj Mookerjee, Professor of Translational Hepatology at UCL and a co-author of the study, said: “One of the reasons that liver disease is so challenging is that patients can deteriorate very quickly. It’s an unfortunate fact that if a patient arrives at the clinic much more jaundiced than they were previously, the chances are that they have already progressed their disease considerably.
“The approach that we’ve assessed in this study could allow us to monitor patients from their own homes much more frequently, than is currently possible and, hopefully, detect worsening of clinical signs and symptoms before things become critical.”
The study’s authors said a larger trial would be needed to validate the safety and accuracy of the approach.
Dr Terence Leung, of UCL’s Medical Physics and Biomedical Engineering department and a co-author of the paper, said: “Smartphone camera technology is improving every year, which is allowing us to develop innovative solutions to unmet healthcare needs using devices that most people have at home.
“It’s great to be able to engineer solutions that are not only cheap and easy to implement, but which will make a real difference to people’s lives.”
