Perhaps every one of us might have heard of the fairy tale of Snow White. In the story there lived a queen who owned a magic mirror, of which she would daily ask,
"Mirror, mirror on the wall, who's the fairest of them all?"
Each time this question was asked, the mirror would give the same answer, "Thou, O Queen, art the fairest of all." This pleased the queen greatly as she knew that her magical mirror could speak nothing but the truth.
But in my blog I am not going to write about the queen who was beautiful, but as well proud and cruel or neither about her magic mirror, which one day gave her a shocking answer that :
"You, my queen, are fair; it is true.
But Snow White is even fairer than you."
Rather I have one another story to tell you, it is the story of a mirror that monitors vital signs of human beings. And this is not any fairy tale; this magic mirror really exists in this world.
This mirror was one of the award winners in the category of 2011 Invention Awards.
An electrical- and medical-engineering graduate student named Ming-Zher Poh, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology came up with the idea of transforming the computer’s webcam into a heart-rate monitor. He initially tested his software in 2009. One night he asked some of his friends to sit in front of his laptop. That night, the program wasn’t working in real time, but its measurements were near perfect. To make that possible, he developed an algorithm that could pick out the heart rate’s light pattern from all the other reflected light captured by a webcam. With help from McDuff, a grad student at the MIT Media Lab, Poh wrote code to process the data in real time, allowing the laptop to generate an instant heart-rate reading.
And soon after a year and a half later, a more refined version of his system embedded with a large framed mirror a was placed in the MIT Media Lab.
"Mirror, mirror on the wall, who's the fairest of them all?"
Each time this question was asked, the mirror would give the same answer, "Thou, O Queen, art the fairest of all." This pleased the queen greatly as she knew that her magical mirror could speak nothing but the truth.
But in my blog I am not going to write about the queen who was beautiful, but as well proud and cruel or neither about her magic mirror, which one day gave her a shocking answer that :
"You, my queen, are fair; it is true.
But Snow White is even fairer than you."
Rather I have one another story to tell you, it is the story of a mirror that monitors vital signs of human beings. And this is not any fairy tale; this magic mirror really exists in this world.
This mirror was one of the award winners in the category of 2011 Invention Awards.
An electrical- and medical-engineering graduate student named Ming-Zher Poh, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology came up with the idea of transforming the computer’s webcam into a heart-rate monitor. He initially tested his software in 2009. One night he asked some of his friends to sit in front of his laptop. That night, the program wasn’t working in real time, but its measurements were near perfect. To make that possible, he developed an algorithm that could pick out the heart rate’s light pattern from all the other reflected light captured by a webcam. With help from McDuff, a grad student at the MIT Media Lab, Poh wrote code to process the data in real time, allowing the laptop to generate an instant heart-rate reading.
And soon after a year and a half later, a more refined version of his system embedded with a large framed mirror a was placed in the MIT Media Lab.
The system works by measuring the slightest variations in brightness produced by blood flow through blood vessels in the face. Actually when your heart beats, it sends a pulse of blood through your blood vessels. Blood absorbs light, so when more of it travels through the vessels, less of the light hitting your skin is reflected. A webcam can pick up those small fluctuations in reflected light and a computer program can translate that data into a heart-rate reading.
Don’t you think that how good it would be if doctors are able to check the vital signs of burn victims or babies without attaching uncomfortable clips, and that it would make it easier for adults to track their cardiovascular health over time? Besides that may be some day you will be able to check your pulse, respiration, and blood pressure as you brush your teeth in the mirror each morning.
If you were impressed by the invention made by this guy and want to know more about his medical mirror you can refer to following websites:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-27083_3-20018626-247.html
http://on.aol.com/video/2011-invention-awards--a-mirror-that-monitors-vital-signs-517858846
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x1212bx_2011-invention-awards-a-mirror-that-monitors-vital-signs_tech
If you were impressed by the invention made by this guy and want to know more about his medical mirror you can refer to following websites:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-27083_3-20018626-247.html
http://on.aol.com/video/2011-invention-awards--a-mirror-that-monitors-vital-signs-517858846
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x1212bx_2011-invention-awards-a-mirror-that-monitors-vital-signs_tech