L’echocardiography or echocardiography is an examination of about 45 minutes frequently used to assess the health of the heart. What if we could perform this verification independently and in one to two minutes? This is what researchers from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) are proposing: they have invented an app capable of measuring the movement of the skin of the neck when the blood crosses the carotid artery thanks to the camera of a smart phone. Their works are featured in the Journal of Critical Care Medicine.
An app that “revolutionizes the diagnosis of heart disease”
This one-of-a-kind technology more accurately measures left ventricular ejection fraction (LEF), ie the percentage of blood ejected from a heart chamber during a beat. When the heart is healthy, the FEV ranges from 50 to 70%. To test their application, the researchers evaluated the hearts of 72 volunteers aged 20 to 92 using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), also capable of measuring FEV but more rarely used due to its high cost. They then performed the same verification using the app.
Result: the margin of error with the smartphone was only 19%, knowing that that accepted with an echocardiography is 20%. This application has “the potential to revolutionize the way doctors detect and monitor heart disease, in the United States but also around the world”, concludes Mory Gharib, lead author of the study. The team of scientists created a start-up, called Avicena, with the aim of marketing their application.
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