5 ms·
NIST researchers use cellphone compass to measure glucose
- lettergram 3y agoEh a lot of “these particles bonded with glucose - so now we can measure blood sugar levels” that’s a massive stretch from where they are at. It’s cool, but nothing close to what’s described.
- rsfern 3y agoI don’t think the magnetic particles interact with the glucose, they’re just a magnetic transducer basically. The main measurement device is a hydrogel that reacts with the glucose and swells, and they measure how far the magnetic particles move using a magnetometer to sense the change in field strength and back out the concentration (and pH) The linked Nature Comm paper seems pretty thorough, and they are reporting really high sensitivity (1000x what you’d need for typical blood glucose levels) https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-024-47073-2 https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-024-47073-2
- lettergram 3y agoOkay sure, I shortened it a bit. My point is the discovery wasn’t directly related to the claims. Your description is more apt than the hyperbole in use cases. To accomplish what they describe would need a lot more research
- rsfern 3y agoTo be fair, they do call it a “proof of concept study” in the press release
- mlhpdx 3y agoI wonder about the reference for the measurement, or precision versus accuracy. Still super interesting application of hybrid common and specialized tech.
- DanielBen6 3y ago[flagged]
- efriis 3y agoKept searching for an “April fools” with a 4/1 publication date to no avail
- logicallee 3y ago[flagged]
- YetAnotherNick 3y agoMy first thought as well. But unless they have went too overboard and published a nature paper[1] just for fun, it seems legit. [1]: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-47073-2 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-47073-2
- teleforce 3y agoJoking aside, you can actually use a wearable non-invasive electromagnetic sensor device to accurately measure glucose level [1]. [1] Meet the inventor: Professor Adrian Porch from Cardiff University: https://www.med-technews.com/medtech-insights/latest-medtech-insights/meet-the-inventor-professor-adrian-porch-from-cardiff-univer/ https://www.med-technews.com/medtech-insights/latest-medtech...
- Dwedit 3y agoType-1 diabetics have no working pancreas, and need something that meets the highest standards before it gets approved for use. Is this product up to those standards?
- manmal 3y agoI think a MARD of <= 14 would be required to be useful.
- ijustlovemath 3y ago10% is what you really need to have excellent control
- manmal 3y agoI‘m not aware of any accurate noninvasive device on the market. Recently there‘s been an influx of fake watches that claim to do so, but they mostly make up the values. The linked article mentions that research is ongoing - can you point me where such a device is being sold?
- teleforce 3y agoI'm not sure if the device is currently being sold since they need to get the approval for any medical devices. For results and accuracy please check their papers from several years back [1], [2]. I think may be you are right, for transparency they need to release all the accuracy, sensitivity and specificity of the non-invasive glucose detection device, and from the publication title it seems only sensitivity results are currently being published. Personally I have one patent pending on non invasive ECG anomaly detection that cover both arrhythmia and ischemia with comprehensive 99% accuracy, sensitivity and specificity, and high accuracy of non invasive detection technique is certainly achievable. [1] Microwave Noninvasive Blood Glucose Monitoring Sensor: Penetration Depth and Sensitivity Analysis (2018) https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/8428850 https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/8428850 [2] Microwave noninvasive blood glucose monitoring sensor: Human clinical trial results (2017): https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/8058721 https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/8058721
- peter_retief 3y agoI have been playing around with various sensors on the skin, one that is interesting is IR absorption which can read glucose as well. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5772583/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5772583/ I got some interesting results with combining sensors and using ML to identify different labels, even managed to identify left and write arms?!? I made a few notes here https://nix64bit.com/identification.html https://nix64bit.com/identification.html
- naikrovek 3y ago> left and write arms How do people make this mistake
- peter_retief 3y agoThey don't read what they right i guess :=)
- bluenose69 3y agoI was surprised to read "Employing this strategy, the researchers measured glucose concentrations as small as a few millionths of a mole" in an article published on an NIST website. I fear that they, like so many organizations, must employ non-experts to interview experts and write stories. But getting the unit of concentration wrong? (Later in the sentence they do note that moles refer to quantity, not concentrations, so the whole sentence is self-contradictory.) This problem is so common I think it might make sense to suggest a common solution. Perhaps an organization specializing in X ought to hire one member of the writing team who has a degree in X, to look over material before it goes out to the world. Or at least pay one of the experts on a per-case basis, say a day of salary for a half hour of work, to go over material before it is published.
- ramon156 3y agoI honestly just hope it's satire, it almost feels on purpose
- ramon156 3y agoI honestly just hope it's satire, it almost feels on purpose
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- WhyUVoteGarbage 3y agoTechnical correctness and public relations are natural enemies. The original material comes from scientists who know what they are doing, but they aren't allowed to write their own press releases. For scientific papers, the scientists are already encumbered by layers of review that make it difficult to meet deadlines for publishing.
- admissionsguy 3y agoI instinctively read it as referring to molar concentration. It is actually common in chemistry to say "10-mole solution", which means 10 moles per litre. The per litre part is implicit, which confused me greatly during undergrad classes. The actual unit of 1 mol/L is called a molar.
- ijustlovemath 3y agoThese sensors might work well in the lab, but people have been trying various spectroscopy based noninvasive sensing techniques for the better part of 15 years, with limited success. The problem is not that you can get a nicely correlated signal when holding a stationary phone against a stationary well of known concentration, the problem is how does your sensor perform when: 1. You're exercising (sweat getting between the sensor and the skin) 2. You're on vasoconstrictors (smoking or blood pressure medications) 3. You're taking medication that "looks" similar to glucose (in electrochemical sensors that's ~~ibuprofen~~ acetaminophen, but the number of magnetic analogues, especially in the presence of interference, is surely greater) 4. You have low perfusion 5. You're sleeping on/compressing the sensor. This changes how the blood flows, and needs to be accounted for or you'll risk reading a false low value. These are just a handful of the problems that modern CGMs face, and only a few of them have working solutions.
- tzs 3y agoThe article is not about a noninvasive sensing technique.
- ijustlovemath 3y agoMagnetometers are noninvasive! They don't penetrate the skin
- adrian_b 3y agoThat's not how it is used here. The sample liquid containing glucose, e.g. wine or possibly blood (the sample might need to be diluted first with pure water) is put on a gel that has volume changes depending on the amount of glucose. The volume changes are detected magnetically because the gel is coated with a ferromagnetic material. If this were used for blood glucose, the blood would have to be extracted first by traditional means. This does not seem to be the intended use, because the already existing invasive devices are more convenient. The intended use appears to be for testing food using a device that contains the gel and to which you attach the smartphone in order to read the results.
- bilsbie 3y agoI’m more interested in measuring insulin than glucose.
- evanjrowley 3y ago>Similarly, the team’s study suggests that a cellphone magnetometer can measure pH levels with the same sensitivity as a thousand-dollar benchtop meter but at a fraction of the cost. A home-brewer or a baker could use the magnetometer to quickly test the pH of various liquids to perfect their craft, and an environmental scientist could measure the pH of ground water samples on-site with higher accuracy than a litmus test strip could provide. To determine if my body is burning ketones on a ketogenic diet, I used to have to pee on pH-sentitive keto test strips. Sounds like in the future I'll be peeing on my phone instead.
- ricardobeat 3y agoDoesn’t a electronic PH meter work for this purpose (hopefully not shared with the kitchen)?
- ricardobeat 3y agoThis doesn’t look like the breakthrough the headline suggests, at least for glucose monitoring. They created a material that contracts/expands depending on measurement levels, and that can be detected by the magnetometer. But the sample needs to be deposited in it. This is not a non-invasive glucose monitoring solution, and current under-skin devices will remain a lot more convenient. A magnetometer costs $1-$5, plus a couple dollars for a microcontroller, what will likely happen is that this will result in a new breed of devices that offer laboratory precision at very low cost. The phone part is irrelevant.
- jfengel 3y agoOf all the things they described as possible, measuring glucose is the least interesting, since we already have a better tech for that. They have a number of other potential applications, and it's rather clever and surprising. They could have led with any of those.