Smart Mirror Monitors Your Face For Tell-Tale Signs Of Disease

Mirror to Assess Health of Individual

The latest is a new mirror which can assess the health of an individual by simply looking into it, which analyses the facial expressions, fatty tissue and how pale or flush a person tends to be. The purpose of the gadget is to mark out cardiovascular diseases like stroke and heart disease which are the prevailing causes of death all across the globe.

Researchers are of the belief that getting to know the early signs of these conditions is the best medicine in reducing the burden of health care cost connected in the treatment of these chronic diseases. Wize Mirror seems to look like a mirror, though incorporated 3D scanners, multispectral cameras as well as gas sensors in order to assess the health of a person viewing into it.

It comprises of facial recognition software which looks for tell-tale signs of stress or anxiety. The device makes use of gas sensors in collecting samples of the user’s breath and checks for certain compounds and features a three dimensional scanner in analysing face shape for weight gain or loss, together with multispectral cameras in order to estimate the heart rate or the level of haemoglobin.

Technology Developed by Consortium of Researchers

The software needs about a minute in analysing the data and then it provides a score which informs the user how healthy they are and also tends to display personalised information on how to make improvements in their health.

The technology has been developed by a consortium of researchers as well as industry partners from seven European Union – EU countries, utilising EU funding. Sara Colantonio together with colleagues from the National Research Council of Italy will be coordinating with the project and would want to utilise Wize Mirror in addressing common long term health issue which are not easy to treat and intent viewing the device as a tool which could be helpful in addressing these health problems of heart diseases as well as diabetes.

The clinical trials of the device are arranged to begin next year at three sites in France and Italy, with focus to compare its readings with those from traditional medical devices. They have stated that `prevention is the most viable approach in reducing the socio-economic burden of chronic and widespread disease like cardiovascular and metabolic diseases’.

Accurate Health Assessment in Natural Setting - Challenging

Consumer technology which can interpret signals from the body to understand the underlying physical as well as mental health is on the point of being part of our daily life. For instance, Cardiio which was originally created at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is an app that utilises a smartphone’s camera in order to monitor the blood levels in the face and expresses the heart rate.

At the MIT’s Media Lab, Javier Hernandez looked at utilising mirrors for the purpose of health monitoring and also developed a program known as SenseGlass wherein it uses Google Glass together with other wearable to measure a person’s mood thus enabling them to handle their emotions.

Hernandez has stated that though the mirrors are great for the purpose of health monitoring, since we use them daily, making use of them in this manner is complex than it seems to sound. According to him `accurate health assessment in natural settings are quite challenging due to several factors like the illumination change, occlusions and the excessive motion’.