A new smartphone app has been developed by University of Washington researchers to check for signs for pancreatic cancer. The app, called “biliscreen” which uses selfies has helped in correctly identifying cases of concern 89.7% of the time. (In an initial clinical study of 70 people, the BiliScreen app — used in conjunction with a 3-D printed box that controls the eye’s exposure to light — correctly identified cases of concern 89.7 percent of the time, compared to the blood test currently used.)
Biliscreen was developed from an already-existent version that screened newborn babies for jaundice and now uses a smartphone camera and machine learning to detect changes in the colour of a person’s sclera (white of the eye)
BiliScreen is a non-invasive alternative to blood draws for measuring bilirubin levels in the blood stream. Excess bilirubin can be an indicator of a variety of health conditions – including pancreatic cancer, a disease that often goes undetected until it is in an advanced stage, when jaundice is visible to the naked eye.
BiliScreen uses a smartphone’s built-in camera and flash to collect pictures of a person’s eye as they snap a selfie. The team developed a computer vision system to automatically and effectively isolate the white parts of the eye, which is a valuable tool for medical diagnostics. The app then calculates the color information from the sclera — based on the wavelengths of light that are being reflected and absorbed — and correlates it with bilirubin levels using machine learning algorithms.
BiliScreen can be used anytime, anywhere in conjunction with either a 3D-printed box or color-calibrated glasses to account for different lighting conditions.
“The problem with pancreatic cancer is that by the time you’re symptomatic, it’s frequently too late,” said lead author Alex Mariakakis, a doctoral student at the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering. “The hope is that if people can do this simple test once a month — in the privacy of their own homes — some might catch the disease early enough to undergo treatment that could save their lives.”
