Measuring Oxygen Saturation With Smartphone Cameras Using Convolutional Neural Networks

Arterial oxygen saturation (SaO 2 ) is an indicator of how much oxygen is carried by hemoglobin in the blood. Having enough oxygen is vital for the functioning of cells in the human body. Measurement of SaO 2 is typically estimated with a pulse oximeter, but recent works have investigated how smartphone cameras can be used to infer SaO 2 . In this paper, we propose methods for the measurement of SaO 2 with a smartphone using convolutional neural networks and preprocessing steps to better guard against motion artifacts. To evaluate this methodology, we conducted a breath-holding study involving 39 participants. We compare the results using two different mobile phones. We compare our model with the ratio-of-ratios model that is widely used in pulse oximeter applications, showing that our system has significantly lower mean absolute error (2.02%) than a medical pulse oximeter.