Cornell engineers have created the Smartphone Cholesterol Application for Rapid Diagnostics, or smartCARD. The smartCARD provides cholesterol-tracking users with greater convenience and tighter monitoring of their total blood cholesterol levels pretty much anywhere and anytime, similar to how diabetics measure glucose levels.
Users place a drop of blood on the test strip, which separates the components and subjects them to enzymatic reactions. The technology then utilizes the smartphone’s camera to capture an image of the test strip and determines the total cholesterol in the blood via a hue-saturation-lightness colorimetric analysis. The team is currently furthering developing the technology to measure other relevant components, such as LDL (low-density lipoprotein – “bad cholesterol”), HDL (high-density lipoprotein – “good cholesterol”), and triglycerides.
Paper in Lab on a Chip: Cholesterol testing on a smartphone…
Press release: New tech lets cholesterol-tracking smartphone users take lifesaving selfies…
