UW researchers are developing a smartphone app that can test for concussions and other traumatic brain injuries, Geekwire reports. The Pupilscreen app will be able to analyze someone’s pupil, using flash and a video camera, and determine if the person has suffered a traumatic brain injury.
This could have important implications for sports. Football teams could use the app to quickly find out if a player should sit ou.
The project comes from the UW’s Ubicomplab.
While it won’t be available commercially for at least two years, researchers just published a scientific paper on it, and a small preliminary study found that the app could “diagnose the brain injuries with almost perfect accuracy using the app’s output alone.”
In a statement, Dr. Lynn McGrath of UW Medicine said: “After further testing, we think this device will empower everyone from Little League coaches to NFL doctors to emergency department physicians to rapidly detect and triage head injury.”
Geekwire also notes in its coverage a 2013 paper in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, which found that people suffer 3.8 million concussions per year during sporting activities — but only 50 percent are reported.