Top TechTop Tech #31: Everyone online, vital signs, hi-res 3D
Promising products and interesting innovations
Today’s Top Tech:
• Camera measures your vital signs
• Camera chip captures hi-res 3D
• Economic advantages of Everyone online
Camera measures your vital signs
Researchers at RiceUniversity are developing a method to track vital signs non-invasively, the Optical Society reports, using a video camera to monitor blood volume.
The idea of using a camera to track vital signs is based on photoplethysmography, a way to measure physiological processes under the skin by monitoring subtle changes at the skin’s surface. The research team created a new algorithm to combine measurements from several regions of the face, using a weighted average. “This improved the accuracy of derived vital signs, rapidly expanding the scope, viability, reach and utility of camera-based vital sign monitoring,” one scientist says.”
“Most methods for measuring vital signs in medical settings require some form of physical contact with the patient,” OSA adds, such as “a blood=pressure cuff around the arm, or an electrocardiogram probe on the chest. But for vulnerable premature babies in a neonatal intensive care unit, these devices can be dangerous. Their sensitive skin would be damaged by the continuous attachment and removal of monitors, opening the door to infections. But as the circulatory system pumps blood throughout the body, the miniscule change in blood volume with each pulse results in a corresponding change in skin color. Though undetectable with the naked eye, the researchers can use a video camera to track these subtle variations and then extract information about blood volume - and ultimately vital signs.
Camera chip captures hi-res 3D
In that picture: a penny, captured with micrometer-resolution from about 1.5 feet, with the height variations recorded as 3D data.
Researchers at the California Institute Of Technology say you might someday “pull your smartphone out of your pocket, take a snapshot with its integrated 3D imager, send it to your 3D printer, and within minutes you have reproduced a replica accurate to within microns of the original object.”
CalTech says its “new imaging technology fits on a tiny chip and, from a distance, can form a high-resolution three-dimensional image of an object on the scale of micrometers.”
The “nanophotonic coherent imager” uses an inexpensive silicon chip less than a millimeter square in size, with LIDAR capabilities with which a target object is illuminated with scanning laser beams. The light that reflects off of the object is then analyzed based on the wavelength of the laser light used, and the LIDAR can gather information about the object’s size and its distance from the laser to create an image of its surroundings. “In a regular camera, each pixel represents the intensity of the light received from a specific point in the image, which could be near or far from the camera–meaning that the pixels provide no information about the relative distance of the object from the camera,” the university adds. “In contrast, each pixel in an image created by the Caltech team’s NCI provides both the distance and intensity information. Each pixel on the chip is an independent interferometer (an instrument that uses the interference of light waves to make precise measurements) which detects the phase and frequency of the signal in addition to the intensity.”
Economic advantages of Everyone online
An optimistic article at Singularity Hub notes that billions more of us on the internet in the next decade will likely bring about untold economic increases.
Top Tech previously reported on the plans Facebook has for drone-based connectivity for otherwise inaccessible areas, and there’s also been much coverage Google’s balloon-based Project Loon. The article however also looks at SpaceX’ proposed array of 700 communication satellites.
“The implications of 7+ billion connected minds are staggering, and we need to be talking about them,” the article adds. “The Rising Billions represent tens of trillions of dollars flowing into the global economy. They will drive the need to bank the un-banked, create an innovation explosion, and drive a new wave of entrepreneurship and global competition.”
