Swedish Researchers introduced a new ear diagnosis’ method using smartphones. Ear infection is given less priority and the patients care less about treating Ear problems. If the ear diseases are not treated in time, it could potentially lead to hearing impairments, and even in some cases one could suffer from some serious life threatening complications.
Researcher of Umea University in Sweden, Claude Laurent quoted saying, “Because of lack of health personnel in many developing countries, ear infections are often misdiagnosed or not diagnosed at all. This may lead to hearing impairments, and even to life-threatening complications.”
The researchers have used an image processing algorithm to diagnose the otitis media, which causes inflammation in the middle ear. Children are the worst sufferers and a staggering half a billion children per year get affected by it.
The eardrums’ images taken using an otoscope are being analysed deeply and carefully in this software-based image processing algorithm developed by the Umea University’s researchers. An otoscope is a medical tool used for the examination of ears.
The image taken is uploaded to the cloud using a smartphone. It’s then examined and compared with high definition collection of visual images. As per the reports, published in the journal EbioMedicine, the accuracy of this image processing based diagnosis method has an accuracy of 80.6%.
This method can be handy in diagnosing ear infections in the developing nations across the globe as Laurent further added, “The method has great potential to ensure accurate diagnosis of ear infections in countries where such opportunities are not available at present.”
