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Screening for neurological disease at home

May 4, 2022

Researchers at the University of California San Diego have developed a smartphone app that can track Alzheimer’s, ADHD and other neurological diseases and disorders from eye analysis. The app uses a front-facing infrared camera, which is built into newer smartphones for facial recognition, along with the selfie camera to track how a person’s pupil changes size. Recent research has shown that pupil size can provide information about a person’s neurological functions. For example, pupil size increases when a person performs a difficult cognitive task or hears an unexpected sound.

The technology is described in a paper presented at the ACM Computer Human Interaction Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2022), in New Orleans, US. The work was awarded an honorable mention for best paper.

Colin Barry, a researcher at UC San Diego and first author of the study, admits that there is still a lot of work ahead for the app to be put into everyday use, but said he is “excited” about the potential of the technology, which could be used to do neurological screening outside of laboratories.

“We hope this will open the door to further exploration of using smartphones to detect and monitor potential health problems earlier,” he said.

The measurement of pupil diameter change – the so-called pupil response test – is a test that can simply and easily diagnose and monitor various neurological diseases and disorders. However, it currently requires specialized and expensive equipment, making it unfeasible to perform it outside the laboratory or clinic. The application was developed to be a more economical and viable solution.

“For us, one of the most important factors in technology development is to ensure that these solutions are ultimately usable for anyone. This includes individuals like older adults who might not be accustomed to using smartphones,” said Barry to the university website.

Source: UC San Diego