Many smartphones can measure your vitals in some way. Older Samsung Galaxy phones have a dedicated heart-rate sensor, while some Android smartphones have an in-display fingerprint sensor or rear camera to measure your heart rate.
Japanese tech company NEC has revealed a new way to track your well-being right from your phone’s selfie camera! Their system called “Face and Facial Parts Monitoring” uses AI to analyze your facial patterns and eyes in selfies. It claims it can detect early signs of problems based on how your eyes move and look.
How does it work? NEC says that studying the tiny muscle movements in your eyes gives you a good idea of your body and mental state. It believes it can accurately check your breathing and blood oxygen levels from a selfie, too! The system will also try to measure your pulse and let you know if the readings seem normal or abnormal.
Pretty amazing right? But we shouldn’t get too excited yet. NEC only plans to launch this technology sometime in their 2024 fiscal year, or possibly later. They also said it’s still in research and testing stages. So we’ll have to wait and see if it actually makes it to phones. Safety regulators would also need to approve it first before people can use it at home.
NEC isn’t the only one working on this idea either. At a tech show in early 2023, a Canadian company showed how their phone app could pull up pages of health data like risks for diseases, all from a 30 second selfie video! They’ve submitted it to the FDA but we don’t know if it will get cleared.
Only time will tell if our selfie cameras can truly become our personal medical scanners. But camera-based health checks could be very convenient if they prove accurate enough. Watch this space in the next couple of years to see if phone selfies start diagnosing more than just your good looks!
