Smartphone Cameras can now identify disease causing bacteria

Smartphone cameras are the best tools to check out how a person is looking to click a quick snap to use multiple filters and flaunt about the locations you never really visited through an edited photograph.

 

Now researchers at University of Washington have developed a method through which smartphone cameras can be used to identify the harmful bacteria that is present on the skin and in the mouth. This new method can trace porphyrins  on the human body. 

 

It can also identify bacteria that cause tooth decay and gingivitis. The team combined the smartphone case modification with image processing methods to identify bacteria on the skin. Through the advanced methods bacteria was identified through photographs taken from a normal smartphone camera.

 

The team of researchers enhanced the capabilities of a smartphone by combining the smartphone camera with a 3D printed ring. The 3D printed ring consisted of ten LED black lights that covered the smartphone case’s camera opening. The LED enabled smartphone camera took images of the mouth's oral cavity and skin’s outer surface(that is prone to acne).

 

The LED lights excite porphyrins, a certain class of bacteria derived molecules. The porphyrins emitted a red fluorescent signal which was immediately caught up by the smartphone camera. 

 

Normal smartphone cameras cannot identify the bacteria. Usual smartphone cameras are the RGB cameras that convert all the wavelengths of light in only three colours- red, green and blue. Every pixel in the images clicked using a smartphone camera are a combination of these three colours. Although bacteria produce different colours like pink, yellow and purple these colours are missed by RGB cameras.

 

(Must Check: Internet of Things(IoT) in Healthcare: 6 Types of Advantages and Challenges)

 

The team converted RGB colour based smartphone images into different wavelengths. This led to the creation of a multispectral image that consisted of 15 different colours. The  multispectral images identified porphyrin clusters on the skin and inside the mouth. 

 

This method was specifically made to identify porphyrin bacteria researchers can alter the method to identify other types of bacteria like propionibacterium, streptococcus bacteria that causes skin acne and tooth decay. This can be done by changing the image analysis pipeline. 

 

As reported by Tech Xplore  Ruikang Wang, Professor of bioengineering and ophthalmology said  "Bacteria on skin and in our mouths can have wide impacts on our health—from causing teeth to decay to slowing down wound healing.” "Since smartphones are so widely used, we wanted to develop a cost-effective, easy tool that people could use to learn about bacteria on skin and in the oral cavity.”