Phone App Detects Brain Injuries

The smartphone has helped revolutionize the way we live. The number of phone applications used today is staggering, with new apps appearing daily. A team of researchers at the University of Washington developed an app, called PupilScreen, that could be life-saving. The phone app provides on-the-spot detection of brain injuries and will be useful when diagnosing patients involved in slip and fall accidents. Brain injuries are one of numerous injuries that can occur in a slip and fall accident. With upcoming technology, doctors can detect brain injuries sooner than expected.

How PupilScreen Will Help

When someone has suffered a head injury, one of the first things emergency workers will do is check to see if the pupils are dilated. To check, they will bring a light to the eye and observe if the pupil shrinks in size when the light strikes. If the pupil does not shrink, there could be a possible concussion. Researchers at the University of Washington hope to make subjective testing a thing of the past. Brain injuries are not always immediately present when suffering a slip and fall accident. By using the light and camera features on a smart phone, the program they developed checks for changes to the pupil so small, they cannot be detected by the human eye. The system then applies a form of artificial intelligence to assess what it reads. A three-second video tracks the pupil size in each frame, helping doctors diagnose brain injuries as soon as they’re detected.

The team conducted a pilot run of the PupilScreen using known head trauma victims and healthy patients. Clinicians then read the information provided by the system and were accurately able to identify all the injured patients, indicating the system was collecting the right data. The UW team plans to further study PupilScreen in various settings to further perfect results and expects to go public with the smart phone app in 2019. This will join other medically advanced phone apps that measure heart rate, blood oxygen levels, and stress rates, among others, using the camera sensor. If successful, PupilScreen can take the place of time-consuming and subjective tests currently performed.

Camden County Slip and Fall Lawyers at DiTomaso Law Advocate for Victims of Brain Injury Due to Slip and Fall Accidents

The Camden County slip and fall lawyers at DiTomaso Law can help when head injuries are worse than initially believed. If you have suffered a traumatic head injury due to a slip and fall accident, you may be eligible to recover damages. We will hold the negligent party liable and obtain you the compensation you deserve through premises liability laws. Contact us today online or call us at 856-414-0010 for a free consultation. With offices in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, we proudly serve clients in the South Jersey and southeastern Pennsylvania areas.