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OSOME SYSTEM
A flash of genius
"Open wide, say aaaah... Breathe deeply... Open your
eyes wide..."
FLASH!!!
"Everything's fine", the doctor reassures you.
But what happened?
Diagnosis at a glance
It seems that a picture is worth a thousand words.
That's certainly the case for Jocelyn Faubert and Vasile
Diaconu, researchers at the School of Optometry of the
Université de Montréal, at least: the new technology they
have developed lets doctors look deep into your eyes
and measure the oxygen level in your blood. No more syringes,
samples or analyses!
A light touch
To measure your blood-oxygen level, the new OSOME* device
illuminates the retinal artery at the back of your eye.
The oxygen in the blood in this artery reacts by
absorbing certain wavelengths (colours) of the light.
As a result, the light bounced back to the device lacks
these wavelengths. This allows OSOME to calculate instantly
the amount of oxygen in your blood.
*OSOME: On-line Spectroreflectometry Oxygenation Measurement
in the Eye
Look for oxygen, find OSOME
Your blood-oxygen level is a valuable indicator of your
state of health. So this device is already being
considered for a variety of applications, e.g. monitoring
a patient's oxygen level during an operation or that of
a premature newborn, detecting cardiovascular disease
or eye problems, and studying the effect of new drugs
on the blood.
Thanks!
The OSOME system is on loan from Jocelyn Faubert and Vasile
Diaconu from the visual psychophysics and perception
laboratory of the University of Montreal.
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