Believe it or not, this is an important tool in the legalization of marijuana. The ability to test is a person is under the influence is one of the issues we face. Driving drunk, high or texting kills people. Anything that impares your ability to function behind the wheel is unaceptable. This may sound kinda preachy but I'm disabled and spend most of my life in a chair. Being able to smoke a little pot is the difference between me and the narcotic haze that it takes for the same relief. It may not be a perfect tool bit it's a start. I live in the ignorant mid-west where the local stores still have water troughs and tie ups for the horses. Just an opinion...
Nice. Now make this so it can detect concentration levels in your body so we can legalize it, regulate it, tax the hell out of it and move on.
/never smoked pot and doesn't ever want to
Seems like a good way to waste a lot of tax payer money. To put that device in the hands of every officer in the US in the same capacity as the breathalyzer would be insane. Not to mention that THC stays in your system for over a month and the closest they can accurately test for it being used is within the last 72 hours. Ripe with inaccuracies, it'll never stand up in court for driving under the influence. Maybe for being under the influence in the last 72 hours. But then there's the whole, do we want to spend our taxes on busting teenagers for having an eventful Saturday. Give us another couple of years and it won't matter out here in Cali anyways.
The basic concept only uses a cellphone because of the ability to write an app for the operating system. Once the software can be ported into a device such as a digital camera it would not only be more accurate, but could analyze higher resolution samples for increased capability. Right now there are virtually no digital cameras with OS's that can be written for by the consumer.
Average device cost would be little more than your average 3to 5 megapixel camera, with cost increasing due to software requirements, wireless capability, and advanced detection algorithms.
It will likely be a few years in the wings, with rigorous testing and refinement of the software before it's a comemrcially viable (and medically reliable) tool for common use. The concept is not only brilliant, but could potentially save hundreds of millions of lives.
@BeautifulAgony: Judging from the fourth pictures of the article, the resolution doesn't seem so critical. The way I understood it, the process works by revealing chemicals in plasma of bloodcells that are telltale for infections, by looking for changes in the absorbtion of certain light frequencies. So probably the ability to reproduce color correctly is much more important.
@William_III_Earl_of_Dastardshi...: True, in which case better (glass) lenses, to reduce chromatic abberation, are probably more important. I'm do think another megapixel or two of resolution would help in making sure that the color information is accurate from the image/light received and not strange low resolution antialiasing, or compression artificating, etc. Lots of phones have a tendency to perform strange actions such as low-light noise reduction, slight blurring and other compensation to accomodate the fact that they use dodgy little cmos sensors and plastic (or low-quality glass) lenses.
I would like to see the results of a bouble-blind test based on multiple negative and positive samples and at two each of least a dozen different camera phones (without extensive modification of the built-in lens, only the added sample viewer/light).
I have a feeling this wouldn't work well across-the-board without some extensive phone-specific coding, since, as mentioned above, the manufacturers use all kinds of tricks to make people think their crappy little phone takes great pictures. (other tricks include boosting saturation of greens and reds, performing noise reduction on low-saturation reds (ie skintones), and performing soft blur on blue tones, and dropping saturation of pictures taken at night and increasing contrast.
These "tricks" aren't bad per se, as they result in decent looking images from relatively low-quality and very tiny hardware... the problem is that they lead to unreliability when you wish to apply them as tools in the medical trade for detecting infectious diseases.
"I wish to extend my apologies, sir, you do not, in fact have AIDS or syphylis.... damn it, I need to buy a better phone, but my carrier has a crappy selection! Anyway, have a great day, and my apologies for quarantining you for so long! Take care now!"
08/04/09
08/04/09
08/04/09
Someone's sarcasm detector is in the shop.
08/04/09
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08/04/09
/never smoked pot and doesn't ever want to
08/04/09
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12/20/08
Average device cost would be little more than your average 3to 5 megapixel camera, with cost increasing due to software requirements, wireless capability, and advanced detection algorithms.
It will likely be a few years in the wings, with rigorous testing and refinement of the software before it's a comemrcially viable (and medically reliable) tool for common use. The concept is not only brilliant, but could potentially save hundreds of millions of lives.
12/20/08
12/20/08
I would like to see the results of a bouble-blind test based on multiple negative and positive samples and at two each of least a dozen different camera phones (without extensive modification of the built-in lens, only the added sample viewer/light).
I have a feeling this wouldn't work well across-the-board without some extensive phone-specific coding, since, as mentioned above, the manufacturers use all kinds of tricks to make people think their crappy little phone takes great pictures. (other tricks include boosting saturation of greens and reds, performing noise reduction on low-saturation reds (ie skintones), and performing soft blur on blue tones, and dropping saturation of pictures taken at night and increasing contrast.
These "tricks" aren't bad per se, as they result in decent looking images from relatively low-quality and very tiny hardware... the problem is that they lead to unreliability when you wish to apply them as tools in the medical trade for detecting infectious diseases.
"I wish to extend my apologies, sir, you do not, in fact have AIDS or syphylis.... damn it, I need to buy a better phone, but my carrier has a crappy selection! Anyway, have a great day, and my apologies for quarantining you for so long! Take care now!"
12/20/08