Study: Selfies can accurately check your blood pressure

If you’ve ever kena sound for taking 5,000 selfies a day and sharing them on social media, we’ve got some news to help you sound back.

Selfies can accurately check your blood pressure!

Actually to be more accurate, video selfies can be used to monitor blood pressure thanks to the work of researchers led by the University of Toronto in Canada.

According to the research published in “Circulation: Cardiovascular Imaging” journal by American Heart Association, transdermal optical imaging can measure someone’s blood pressure.

How does it work?

First you need a smartphone equipped with transdermal
optical imaging software.

Then, you just take a 2-minute video selfie.

When light falls on your face, the digital optic sensors in the smartphone can pick up the blood flow pattern on your face.

The transdermal optical imaging technology detects changes in blood flow. Thus, predicting blood pressure.

How accurate is it?

Testing it out on 1,328 people, researchers found that it
was 95% accurate!

They measured systolic, diastolic and pulse pressure using video selfies and compared it with readings from traditional measuring devices (like that cuff that squeezes your arm every time you try to get an MC).

Amazingly, systolic blood pressure was predicted with nearly 95% accuracy, while diastolic blood pressure and pulse pressure were at almost 96% – which meets international standards for blood pressure monitoring devices.

“Nice, can I use it?”

Of course, you can! (yay!) But not right now.(boo!)

More research needs to be done with different lighting and skin tones.

Besides, the researchers themselves admit that 2-minute
video selfies are a bit too long lah. They’re looking to cut it down to
30 seconds (which is still two insta-stories long, but oh well ¯\_(ツ)_/¯)

Nonetheless, the findings are still a major breakthrough. Lead author of the research, Professor Kang Lee believes that this technology has the potential to go very far.

“If future studies confirm our results and show this method can be used to measure blood pressures that are clinically high or low, we will have the option of a contactless and non-invasive method to monitor blood pressures conveniently – perhaps anytime and anywhere – for health management purposes.”

Professor Kang Lee, University of Toronto via Sky News.

So, what you waiting for? Go ahead and take your selfie!