Unmet Need
Analysis of a complete blood count (CBC) test can help detect a plethora of diseases and conditions including leukemia, anemia, and blood infections. The information gained from a CBC analysis helps doctors treat any unusual symptoms, reduce risk of disease or complications, or simply help the patient make decisions to optimize their health. However, the current state of the art method requires blood to be drawn in order to perform a CBC test and analysis by running the blood sample through a hematology analyzer. The hematology analyzer then counts the blood cells and creates histograms for the clinician to view. Some hematology analyzers can detect size and shape of cells in addition to counting cells, which can further inform clinicians about any possible diseases or conditions that the patient may have. Existing hematology analyzers require laboratory equipment, expertise to operate, are expensive, and rely on on invasive blood draws for analysis. Thus, there is a need for a non-invasive, low-cost procedure that can perform fast and reliable CBC tests. There are also future areas of opportunity that would be enabled by such a system, such as monitoring temporal trends in blood constituents, observing cellular-endothelium interactions for the first time in-vivo to guide pharmaceutical agent development, and enabling a foundational new vital sign that could be exploited by machine learning technologies for improving patient care.
Technology Overview
Johns Hopkins inventors have designed a technology to enable non-invasive blood analysis through a mobile phone, tablet, or compact device. The technology consists of a capillaroscope that utilizes a cell-phone image sensor to acquire high speed videos of capillaries in the region of interest. The capillaroscope redirects light from flash in order to obliquely-illuminate the object in question through the objective lens. There is also a disposable cap with suction mechanism that stabilizes the field and prevents cross-contamination. The technology is coupled with a user-interface to guide the operator in positioning the capillaroscope properly to record high-quality videos. The user-interface automatically analyzes videos once complete and takes into account prior-knowledge (such as age, weight, ethnicity, etc.) as input, and outputs final diagnostic values similar to ones acquired from a complete blood count (CBC) test. Complete blood count is very useful for numerous diseases such as emergency triage, anemia, sickle cell disease, and overall health monitoring in the ICU.
Stage of Development
A prototype of this invention has been created and data has been collected from healthy volunteers and compared to volunteers with known blood abnormalities. Development of the prototype, algorithm, and data analysis are ongoing.
