Design of a Mobile-App for Non-Invasively Detecting High Blood Cholesterol Using Eye Images

Abstract

Medical research proves that high blood cholesterol is identifiable through the iris portion of the human eyes. Currently, a clinical blood test is the only method used in identifying high cholesterol. This study proposed an IT-based approach to prove the concept of monitoring cholesterol content in the blood using the human irises. We have developed a conceptual framework and a smartphone application aimed at capturing an image of the eye and analyzing it for symptoms associated with high blood cholesterol. This is a breakthrough innovation for a non-invasive way of finding out blood-cholesterol. The application captures the eye image and necessary metadata from a user. Then, a software code will examine the textural pattern of the eye, thus detecting the presence of high blood cholesterol. The result will be displayed on the user's mobile application. Primarily, the feedback to the user will be either "No" or "Yes" cholesterol content in the blood. The results presented through this app will form the basis for a further medical checkup if necessary.

The Usability and Trustworthiness of Medical Eye Images

“…Prior work has presented smartphone apps to diagnose disease based on eye-images, e.g. for cataract detection [20,21], to identify high cholesterol levels [22,23], to diagnose concussions [24] and for glaucoma screening [23,25]. Akil and Elloumi [26] present a meta paper, investigating the image quality and diagnosis performance achieved in eight prior works using smartphones equipped with additional lenses for retinal examination.…”