Project Description:
Pulse oximeters are popular devices that measure oxygen saturation levels to monitor respiratory function through determining the oxygen saturation of a patient’s blood. However, this medical device has been shown to overestimate oxygen levels for patients with darker skin inaccurately. Clinical standard pulse oximeters rely on light absorption through the skin to measure blood oxygen saturation, and due to this mechanism, they tend to provide less accurate readings for people with darker skin tones due to higher melanin interfering with light absorption. This issue is also compounded with the high cost of pulse oximeters, making them inaccessible in low-resource areas. The project focuses on designing and developing a low-cost pulse oximetry for children with darker skin, allowing for more accurate detection of critical congenital heart disease (CCHD) in developing communities. This innovative device will quantify the patient’s skin tone with a melanin quantification system. After the patient’s skin tone is quantified, our correction factor algorithm will take into account a patient’s skin color metric and apply a respective correction factor to the original blood oxygen saturation reading. This correction factor will modify the live measurement allowing for a more accurate measurement to be displayed. This work will contribute to more equitable healthcare outcomes by improving diagnosis accuracy for individuals with darker skin tones, particularly in low-resource settings.
