8 ms·

YC Hacks Winner: Athelas – Blood imaging and analysis from your smartphone

170 points by joshmlewis 12y ago

joncalhoun 12y ago
Was the lens ready prior to YC Hacks? I am not trying to take away from what they built, but I am genuinely curious what all was done prior to YC Hacks, since building the lens there seems like a challenge in itself.
- lbotos 12y ago
  It was described as a "cheap lens" and was very much electrically taped on. I assume it was tested prior to the hackathon though. The biggest accomplishment was this was a solo hacker. It was very well done for the time allotted.
- imkevinxu 12y ago
  From what I remember it was an iPhone with the flash light turned on face down on the table and then a toilet paper roll on top of it with a blood sample in one of those rectangular glass things on top of the toilet paper roll with another iPhone examining it. Please correct me if I'm wrong
- ttandon 12y ago
  Here's what I used: http://www.edmundoptics.com/optics/optical-lenses/ball-condenser-lenses/n-bk7-ball-lenses/2041 http://www.edmundoptics.com/optics/optical-lenses/ball-conde... Basically, I took a piece of rubber, poked a hole in it, and fit the lens in. It took a couple of hours to get the positioning right but after that it worked like a charm :)
tmrtn 12y ago
How is this different than lifelens?
- calbear81 12y ago
  Is lifelens active anymore? Their blog looks like it's been hacked and hasn't been updated in a while. More info on LifeLens here (http://www.forbes.com/sites/jenniferhicks/2014/07/30/biomimicry-continues-to-evolve-fly-inspires-tiny-microphone/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/jenniferhicks/2014/07/30/biomimi...)
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
- chatmasta 12y ago
  It was built in 30 hours by a high school student, to name one difference. (Dear downvoters, this was meant to be laudatory.)
ajiang 12y ago
Not only is this an impressive application of data science in solving a real problem, I'm even more impressed that Tanay is still in high school and already building great hacks leveraging computer vision and machine learning. Truly awesome work that deserves the recognition.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
lbotos 12y ago
2nd place: http://ychacks.challengepost.com/submissions/25794-nunchuck-js http://ychacks.challengepost.com/submissions/25794-nunchuck-... 3rd place: http://ychacks.challengepost.com/submissions/25746-vrniture http://ychacks.challengepost.com/submissions/25746-vrniture My favorites: http://ychacks.challengepost.com/submissions/25722-savant http://ychacks.challengepost.com/submissions/25722-savant - basically text searchable system playback. Think Timemachine meets quicktime recorder. http://ychacks.challengepost.com/submissions/25720-gezi-web-browser http://ychacks.challengepost.com/submissions/25720-gezi-web-... - Tabless browser. It was an interesting concept using the history as the search/navigation display. He struggled to sell during the pitch. http://ychacks.challengepost.com/submissions/25770-listeningpost http://ychacks.challengepost.com/submissions/25770-listening... - This was an audio parser that realtime searched what you were saying in a conversation. So if you said "Apple stock versus microsoft stock" it would search and result would be displayed.
- kandalf 12y ago
  One of my favorites, that didn't make the top 7: http://ychacks.challengepost.com/submissions/25719-jugglr http://ychacks.challengepost.com/submissions/25719-jugglr - a pebble + ipad app that tracks your juggling.
  - calbear81 12y ago
    The juggling was extremely impressive and having to juggle for like a hour during the demo session was amazing.
- calbear81 12y ago
  Glad you liked ListeningPost - you can play with it here: http://www.bunkmates.co/ http://www.bunkmates.co/
  - iandanforth 12y ago
    502 mate.
tdaltonc 12y ago
I love the idea and the scrappy implementation, but how does anyone know that this works? What was it validated against? Should the title maybe be "Idea for cheap disease analysis via blood sample and iOS"
- george88b 12y ago
  As an analytical chemist also with a degree in biochem who has worked extensively on blood analysis, this will not work at any meaningful rate of reliability. I sometimes get frustrated when the key part of some great breakthrough is hid behind a buzzword as if its a cure-all for the details. I would love to know how "machine learning" is going to just magically make this work at a reliable rate. I guess I am just a pessimistic lab rat.
  - gotrecruit 12y ago
    my shallow knowledge of machine learning tells me that the idea behind it is that initially it will suck at diagnosis and analysis, but over time the algorithm will learn and improve to a point where eventually it becomes actually good at it and even exceeds human capability.
    - john_b 12y ago
      Machine learning, in this context supervised machine learning, is a useful tool for deriving unintuitive relationships between different parts of complex data sets. To do this, there must be some discernible correlation between the parameters of interest that isn't subsumed within the noise of the system+measuring device(s). In this case, those parameters would be the image data and whatever health parameter is of interest (e.g. white blood cell count). My initial skepticism, perhaps that of the parent comments as well, has more to do with whether the measurements are of high enough quality for any reliable analysis to be done. The app doesn't seem to require any background or contextual data either (though I haven't verified this). If not, false positives and negatives could be problematic. Anyway, machine learning isn't a form of magic that can transform data with no meaningful sensitivity to something into a something that is sensitive to it.
deepGem 12y ago
Two words. Hats off !!. My initial pessimistic instinct told me that this was not completely built at the hackathon. Glad I read through the comments.
gotrecruit 12y ago
one question: why is every single person in the YC Hacks photos using a variant of the macbook? i'm someone who is about to pursue a CS degree, and also embarking on an autodidactic journey in software development and i'm entirely used to windows machines and do not personally like the mac interface that much (possibly simply out of habit). why is it so prevalent for developers and programmers to use macs? are windows machines inferior for such purposes?
- soperj 12y ago
  As a non-mac user, the one thing that mac does have over windows is ready access to a unix terminal out of the box. That's about it. If that's what you want though, just go with linux and skip the apple tax.
  - gotrecruit 12y ago
    must i use linux? are windows machines really so terrible to use for software development and programming?
    - jonny_eh 12y ago
      Unless you stick with MS dev tools like Visual Studio and .NET, unfortunately, I'd have to say yes. You can still use Windows for general software development, many people do, but most tutorials and tools are aimed at unix compatible systems. Also, when it comes time to deploy a server on AWS (or any cloud provider other than Azure), it'll help to know your way around a unix-like OS. Also consider that for iOS development you need a Mac, and those seem more lucrative these days than Windows apps.
    - jorgeortiz85 12y ago
      I've found there are two very different worlds of software development. For convenience, I'll label them the "Microsoft" world, and the "Open Source" world. (The labels aren't completely accurate, but I think they're largely descriptive.) The Microsoft world runs .NET, Visual Studio, C#/VB.NET/ASP.NET, targets the Windows desktop runtime (tho increasingly also the web), relies primarily on proprietary (and usually non-gratis) libraries and tools, etc. The Open Source world revolves around *NIX, uses open-source languages (gcc, clang, Java, V8 Javascript, MRI Ruby, etc), targets the Linux runtime and sometimes OS X/iOS, relies primarily on open-source (and gratis) libraries and tools, etc. The ecosystem differences go pretty deep. For example, even though either world can interop with practically any SQL database, inhabitants of one will largely choose Microsoft SQL Server while inhabitants of the other will largely choose MySQL/PostgreSQL. Both can have great software development or terrible software development. It's possible to mix and match (eg, using Windows doesn't preclude you from writing Ruby). But startups tend to choose the Open Source world, likely due to the combination of lower licensing costs and the "hackability" of open-source software. I'd argue that due to those same reasons, the Open Source world has produced more innovation in the last decade.
woah 12y ago
Where did they get malarial blood during the hackathon?
- jfoster 12y ago
  Perhaps the data they are using is available online somewhere.
  - joshmlewis 12y ago
    This is correct. He said he used training data sets online to test.
- tzhong 12y ago
  But he did test on a few willing participants!
WordBiLLY_maker 12y ago
Athelas is pretty awesome, and potentially life-saving. Fantastic job Tanay.
carbocation 12y ago
This sounds like something that is done in every American hospital - the "automated diff." In a blood count, the cells are examined and determined to be red cells, white cells, or platelets. Within each category of cell there are sub-types (neutrophils, lymphocytes, monocytes, eosinophils, basophils) and sub-sub-types (bands, metamyelocytes, etc). Basically, you can automatically identify members of various cellular lineages. Cool that they got this to work through an iPhone camera.
r00k 12y ago
For those that attended, was it tough to concentrate in that large warehouse-y room? Looked loud and busy.
- joshmlewis 12y ago
  It was noisy at times and the chairs were pretty flimsy but that's part of the fun of hackathons. It's a test of a lot of things like time management, concentration, will power, teamwork, communication, etc. Afterawhile you get so focused on what you're doing you don't notice how big it is. Some teams were in the old YC building as well. I have to say they did a pretty good job organizing. Wifi was perfect, power was everywhere, food was awesome and plentiful, events happened on time.
JoshTriplett 12y ago
Very impressive work, and great name as well.
greggman 12y ago
Interesting that nothing in the original post says iOS. Only HN's title. In fact the page linked to says "BUILT FOR Android iOS Mobile – HTML Web Desktop – Mac Desktop – Other Hardware / Wearable"
- dang 12y ago
  Thanks. We changed the title to what the post says.
- joshmlewis 12y ago
  I was there when he demo'd and he used an iPhone. He never mentioned anything else so I assumed.
thecritic1729 12y ago
There have been a lot of these recently, actually something launched about a week ago. Still its great for a 30 hr hackathon. http://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/ianxen-rapid-iphone-app-to-eradicate-malaria/#!bu496r http://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/ianxen-rapid-iphone-app-... Indiegogo:https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/end-malaria-on-bangka-island-indonesia https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/end-malaria-on-bangka-isl...
- thecritic1729 12y ago
  In fact the whole turn your iphone into microscope is a growing area of interest for bio-hackers. This one seems to be similar to what was done at the hackathon. Would definitely try it one of these days. http://kottke.org/13/10/turn-your-iphone-into-a-microscope http://kottke.org/13/10/turn-your-iphone-into-a-microscope http://www.instructables.com/id/10-Smartphone-to-digital-microscope-conversion/ http://www.instructables.com/id/10-Smartphone-to-digital-mic...
earino 12y ago
In the article's slideshow there are a bunch of interesting pictures. The very last picture looks to be a box full of Lego blocks? What did that component of the solution do? :)
- ttandon 12y ago
  Glad you mentioned it! Originally I was using that as a mount for the microscope, but unfortunately the lights placed in it weren't strong enough. The iPhone camera flash turned out to work best.
ihnorton 12y ago
Nicely done! Manu Prakash's lab at Stanford has explored this bead-lens approach quite a bit with the Foldscope project: http://www.foldscope.com/ http://www.foldscope.com/ http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0098781 http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjourna... It has come up a few times on HN, e.g.: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7591573 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7591573
seesomesense 12y ago
Try getting FDA approval for this and see what happens.
owenversteeg 12y ago
Cool! This definitely deserved to win, I think. At the least it's better than the other YC Hacks thing I looked at, which had XSS holes! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8130482 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8130482

170 points by joshmlewis 12y ago

Was the lens ready prior to YC Hacks? I am not trying to take away from what they built, but I am genuinely curious what all was done prior to YC Hacks, since building the lens there seems like a challenge in itself.

lbotos 12y ago
It was described as a "cheap lens" and was very much electrically taped on. I assume it was tested prior to the hackathon though. The biggest accomplishment was this was a solo hacker. It was very well done for the time allotted.
imkevinxu 12y ago
From what I remember it was an iPhone with the flash light turned on face down on the table and then a toilet paper roll on top of it with a blood sample in one of those rectangular glass things on top of the toilet paper roll with another iPhone examining it. Please correct me if I'm wrong
ttandon 12y ago
Here's what I used: http://www.edmundoptics.com/optics/optical-lenses/ball-condenser-lenses/n-bk7-ball-lenses/2041 http://www.edmundoptics.com/optics/optical-lenses/ball-conde... Basically, I took a piece of rubber, poked a hole in it, and fit the lens in. It took a couple of hours to get the positioning right but after that it worked like a charm :)

tmrtn 12y ago

How is this different than lifelens?

calbear81 12y ago
Is lifelens active anymore? Their blog looks like it's been hacked and hasn't been updated in a while. More info on LifeLens here (http://www.forbes.com/sites/jenniferhicks/2014/07/30/biomimicry-continues-to-evolve-fly-inspires-tiny-microphone/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/jenniferhicks/2014/07/30/biomimi...)
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
chatmasta 12y ago
It was built in 30 hours by a high school student, to name one difference. (Dear downvoters, this was meant to be laudatory.)

ajiang 12y ago

Not only is this an impressive application of data science in solving a real problem, I'm even more impressed that Tanay is still in high school and already building great hacks leveraging computer vision and machine learning. Truly awesome work that deserves the recognition.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

lbotos 12y ago

2nd place: http://ychacks.challengepost.com/submissions/25794-nunchuck-js http://ychacks.challengepost.com/submissions/25794-nunchuck-... 3rd place: http://ychacks.challengepost.com/submissions/25746-vrniture http://ychacks.challengepost.com/submissions/25746-vrniture My favorites: http://ychacks.challengepost.com/submissions/25722-savant http://ychacks.challengepost.com/submissions/25722-savant - basically text searchable system playback. Think Timemachine meets quicktime recorder. http://ychacks.challengepost.com/submissions/25720-gezi-web-browser http://ychacks.challengepost.com/submissions/25720-gezi-web-... - Tabless browser. It was an interesting concept using the history as the search/navigation display. He struggled to sell during the pitch. http://ychacks.challengepost.com/submissions/25770-listeningpost http://ychacks.challengepost.com/submissions/25770-listening... - This was an audio parser that realtime searched what you were saying in a conversation. So if you said "Apple stock versus microsoft stock" it would search and result would be displayed.

kandalf 12y ago
One of my favorites, that didn't make the top 7: http://ychacks.challengepost.com/submissions/25719-jugglr http://ychacks.challengepost.com/submissions/25719-jugglr - a pebble + ipad app that tracks your juggling.
- calbear81 12y ago
  The juggling was extremely impressive and having to juggle for like a hour during the demo session was amazing.
calbear81 12y ago
Glad you liked ListeningPost - you can play with it here: http://www.bunkmates.co/ http://www.bunkmates.co/
- iandanforth 12y ago
  502 mate.

tdaltonc 12y ago

I love the idea and the scrappy implementation, but how does anyone know that this works? What was it validated against? Should the title maybe be "Idea for cheap disease analysis via blood sample and iOS"

george88b 12y ago
As an analytical chemist also with a degree in biochem who has worked extensively on blood analysis, this will not work at any meaningful rate of reliability. I sometimes get frustrated when the key part of some great breakthrough is hid behind a buzzword as if its a cure-all for the details. I would love to know how "machine learning" is going to just magically make this work at a reliable rate. I guess I am just a pessimistic lab rat.
- gotrecruit 12y ago
  my shallow knowledge of machine learning tells me that the idea behind it is that initially it will suck at diagnosis and analysis, but over time the algorithm will learn and improve to a point where eventually it becomes actually good at it and even exceeds human capability.
  - john_b 12y ago
    Machine learning, in this context supervised machine learning, is a useful tool for deriving unintuitive relationships between different parts of complex data sets. To do this, there must be some discernible correlation between the parameters of interest that isn't subsumed within the noise of the system+measuring device(s). In this case, those parameters would be the image data and whatever health parameter is of interest (e.g. white blood cell count). My initial skepticism, perhaps that of the parent comments as well, has more to do with whether the measurements are of high enough quality for any reliable analysis to be done. The app doesn't seem to require any background or contextual data either (though I haven't verified this). If not, false positives and negatives could be problematic. Anyway, machine learning isn't a form of magic that can transform data with no meaningful sensitivity to something into a something that is sensitive to it.

deepGem 12y ago

Two words. Hats off !!. My initial pessimistic instinct told me that this was not completely built at the hackathon. Glad I read through the comments.

gotrecruit 12y ago

one question: why is every single person in the YC Hacks photos using a variant of the macbook? i'm someone who is about to pursue a CS degree, and also embarking on an autodidactic journey in software development and i'm entirely used to windows machines and do not personally like the mac interface that much (possibly simply out of habit). why is it so prevalent for developers and programmers to use macs? are windows machines inferior for such purposes?

soperj 12y ago
As a non-mac user, the one thing that mac does have over windows is ready access to a unix terminal out of the box. That's about it. If that's what you want though, just go with linux and skip the apple tax.
- gotrecruit 12y ago
  must i use linux? are windows machines really so terrible to use for software development and programming?
  - jonny_eh 12y ago
    Unless you stick with MS dev tools like Visual Studio and .NET, unfortunately, I'd have to say yes. You can still use Windows for general software development, many people do, but most tutorials and tools are aimed at unix compatible systems. Also, when it comes time to deploy a server on AWS (or any cloud provider other than Azure), it'll help to know your way around a unix-like OS. Also consider that for iOS development you need a Mac, and those seem more lucrative these days than Windows apps.
  - jorgeortiz85 12y ago
    I've found there are two very different worlds of software development. For convenience, I'll label them the "Microsoft" world, and the "Open Source" world. (The labels aren't completely accurate, but I think they're largely descriptive.) The Microsoft world runs .NET, Visual Studio, C#/VB.NET/ASP.NET, targets the Windows desktop runtime (tho increasingly also the web), relies primarily on proprietary (and usually non-gratis) libraries and tools, etc. The Open Source world revolves around *NIX, uses open-source languages (gcc, clang, Java, V8 Javascript, MRI Ruby, etc), targets the Linux runtime and sometimes OS X/iOS, relies primarily on open-source (and gratis) libraries and tools, etc. The ecosystem differences go pretty deep. For example, even though either world can interop with practically any SQL database, inhabitants of one will largely choose Microsoft SQL Server while inhabitants of the other will largely choose MySQL/PostgreSQL. Both can have great software development or terrible software development. It's possible to mix and match (eg, using Windows doesn't preclude you from writing Ruby). But startups tend to choose the Open Source world, likely due to the combination of lower licensing costs and the "hackability" of open-source software. I'd argue that due to those same reasons, the Open Source world has produced more innovation in the last decade.

woah 12y ago

Where did they get malarial blood during the hackathon?

jfoster 12y ago
Perhaps the data they are using is available online somewhere.
- joshmlewis 12y ago
  This is correct. He said he used training data sets online to test.
tzhong 12y ago
But he did test on a few willing participants!

WordBiLLY_maker 12y ago

Athelas is pretty awesome, and potentially life-saving. Fantastic job Tanay.

carbocation 12y ago

This sounds like something that is done in every American hospital - the "automated diff." In a blood count, the cells are examined and determined to be red cells, white cells, or platelets. Within each category of cell there are sub-types (neutrophils, lymphocytes, monocytes, eosinophils, basophils) and sub-sub-types (bands, metamyelocytes, etc). Basically, you can automatically identify members of various cellular lineages. Cool that they got this to work through an iPhone camera.

r00k 12y ago

For those that attended, was it tough to concentrate in that large warehouse-y room? Looked loud and busy.

joshmlewis 12y ago
It was noisy at times and the chairs were pretty flimsy but that's part of the fun of hackathons. It's a test of a lot of things like time management, concentration, will power, teamwork, communication, etc. Afterawhile you get so focused on what you're doing you don't notice how big it is. Some teams were in the old YC building as well. I have to say they did a pretty good job organizing. Wifi was perfect, power was everywhere, food was awesome and plentiful, events happened on time.

JoshTriplett 12y ago

Very impressive work, and great name as well.

greggman 12y ago

Interesting that nothing in the original post says iOS. Only HN's title. In fact the page linked to says "BUILT FOR Android iOS Mobile – HTML Web Desktop – Mac Desktop – Other Hardware / Wearable"

dang 12y ago
Thanks. We changed the title to what the post says.
joshmlewis 12y ago
I was there when he demo'd and he used an iPhone. He never mentioned anything else so I assumed.

thecritic1729 12y ago

There have been a lot of these recently, actually something launched about a week ago. Still its great for a 30 hr hackathon. http://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/ianxen-rapid-iphone-app-to-eradicate-malaria/#!bu496r http://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/ianxen-rapid-iphone-app-... Indiegogo:https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/end-malaria-on-bangka-island-indonesia https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/end-malaria-on-bangka-isl...

thecritic1729 12y ago
In fact the whole turn your iphone into microscope is a growing area of interest for bio-hackers. This one seems to be similar to what was done at the hackathon. Would definitely try it one of these days. http://kottke.org/13/10/turn-your-iphone-into-a-microscope http://kottke.org/13/10/turn-your-iphone-into-a-microscope http://www.instructables.com/id/10-Smartphone-to-digital-microscope-conversion/ http://www.instructables.com/id/10-Smartphone-to-digital-mic...

earino 12y ago

In the article's slideshow there are a bunch of interesting pictures. The very last picture looks to be a box full of Lego blocks? What did that component of the solution do? :)

ttandon 12y ago
Glad you mentioned it! Originally I was using that as a mount for the microscope, but unfortunately the lights placed in it weren't strong enough. The iPhone camera flash turned out to work best.

ihnorton 12y ago

Nicely done! Manu Prakash's lab at Stanford has explored this bead-lens approach quite a bit with the Foldscope project: http://www.foldscope.com/ http://www.foldscope.com/ http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0098781 http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjourna... It has come up a few times on HN, e.g.: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7591573 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7591573

seesomesense 12y ago

Try getting FDA approval for this and see what happens.

owenversteeg 12y ago

Cool! This definitely deserved to win, I think. At the least it's better than the other YC Hacks thing I looked at, which had XSS holes! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8130482 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8130482