Prototype app can accurately measure blood pressure from selfies

Did you know your selfie could give an insight into your health? Scientists at the University of Toronto have published a proof-of-concept that a smartphone app could measure blood pressure by analysing a selfie video.

As Quartz reports, the scientists define the method as 'transdermal optical imaging' which analyses how proteins such as hemoglobin are bounced off through the light emitted from the smartphone, which can help in getting a blood pressure reading by measuring minute changes.

The measurements are fed to a machine learning algorithm which is able to accurately produce blood pressure readings 95 per cent of the time. However, proof-of-concept currently does not support racial diversity.