IEEE SENSORS JOURNAL, VOL. 17, NO. 21, NOVEMBER 1, 2017 7149 Digital Camera-Based Spectrometry for the Development of Point-of-Care Anemia Detection on Ultra-Low Volume Whole Blood Sample Animesh Halder, Probir Kumar Sarkar, Poulomi Pal, Subhananda Chakrabarti, Member, IEEE, Prantar Chakrabarti, Debasis Bhattacharyya, Rajib Chakraborty, and Samir Kumar Pal Abstract— Objective of this paper: Early detection of anemia (low hemoglobin count) at point-of-care (PoC) in a low resource setting is challenging given the associated capital and recurring costs of the device. In this paper, we have developed a faster and reliable method to screen the hemoglobin level in the whole blood in a resource limited point of care setting. We have also investigated a simple scattering-based technique to predict the overall morphology of the red blood cells. Methods: In this paper, we have developed and validated a digital camera-based spectrometer for the early detection of anemia with the whole blood of 10-μL volume in a low resource PoC setting. The developed device consists of two LEDs [Green (570 nm) and Red (631 nm)], a web camera, a fluid sensing chamber (cuvette holder), and associate electronics. Validation of Beer–Lambert law using the blood of various degree of dilution has been achieved in this in vitro experiment. Major results: A signifi- cant number of human subjects (300) having a wide range of hemoglobin counts in a hospital is tested and found to reproduce results from a gold standard automated hematology analyzer. Our developed microcuvette requires only 10-μL unprocessed whole blood sample for the device. Conclusions: The device is expected to serve as a minimally invasive e-health care device for the anemia screening in any resource-limited point of care setting. Index Terms— Anemia screening, digital camera-based low-cost device, e-health, point-of-care (PoC) screening and optics. I. I NTRODUCTION I RON deficiency has been assessed to be the most com- mon cause of anemia globally. The World Health Orga- nization (WHO) declares the prevalence of anemia strongly effects on maternal and infant health which in turn affects the socioeconomic development [1]–[3]. The hemoglobin con- centration provides the information about the severity of iron deficiency in the blood [4], [5]. According to the global sta- tistics of WHO, roughly 43% children, 38% pregnant women, Manuscript received June 29, 2017; revised August 20, 2017; accepted September 11, 2017. Date of publication September 14, 2017; date of current version October 11, 2017. This work was supported in part by ICMR under Grant 5/3/8/247/2014ITR and in part by DBT under Grant BT/PR11534/NNT/28/766/2014. The associate editor coordinating the review of this paper and approving it for publication was Dr. Ioannis Raptis. (Corresponding author: Samir Kumar Pal.) A. Halder, P. K. Sarkar, P. Pal, and S. K. Pal are with the S. N. Bose National Centre for Basic Sciences, Kolkata 700106, India (e-mail: skpal@bose.res.in). S. Chakrabarti is with the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, Mumbai 400076, India. P. Chakrabarti and D. Bhattacharyya are with the Nil Ratan Sircar Medical College and Hospital, Kolkata 700014, India. R. Chakraborty is with the University of Calcutta, Kolkata 700106, India. Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/JSEN.2017.2752371 29% non-pregnant women and 29% of all women of reproduc- tive age are affected by anemia [6]. Therefore, determination of hemoglobin concentration is considered as the integral part of healthcare service, particularly, early trace of anemia obviously a help to the blood transfusion management, which protects both donors’ and recipients’ health [7]. Three main reasons of anemia include blood loss, deficiency of red blood cell production and high rate of red blood cell destruction. Abnormalities in RBC morphology also indicates the ane- mia or abnormal cell development and are caused by numerous diseases like malaria, sickle cell anemia, megaloblastic and pernicious anemia [8]. The state-of-the-art of the available technologies for deter- mining hemoglobin concentration and the average cell size varies from low-tech to high-tech depending on the target resource setting [9]. Hemoglobin measurement is usually carried out in well-equipped laboratory with sophisticated instruments based on either electrochemical impedance spectroscopy [10], [11] or Coulter principle (e.g. automated hematology analyzer) [12]. Although all these techniques are effective but involve complex and expensive experi- mental setup, operational technical skill and time consum- ing measurements for anemia detection. In this context HemoCue [13]–[15] provides semi-quantitative gravimetric copper sulfate method for hemoglobin determination in portable format but still cost ineffective. In addition many non- invasive methods are also developed for hemoglobin measure- ment [16]–[18] including the conventional Pulse CO-Oximeter, Pronto-7 monitor (version 2.1.9, Masimo Corporation, Irvine, USA), NBM-200MP monitor (Orsense, Nes Ziona, Israel) and spectrophotometer [19]. However, the precision and sensitivity level of these instruments depend on different physiological factors including arterial pulse, body movements, skin tones, venous pulsations. A survey on the aforesaid instruments reveals lack of an inexpensive, portable and accurate device for anemia diagnosis in low resource territories. In recent time smartphone based techniques are developed for blood analyses and hemoglobin detection. The variety of such devices has been reviewed in the literature [20]. One of such devices developed by Prof. Ozcan group from UCLA uses disposable plastic cuvette-based add-on for the hemoglobin detection [21] using processed whole blood. The whole blood sample used in the add-on was reported to be lysed and purified (chemical treatment followed by mechanical separation). The LED light source used in the add-on is ∼430 nm, which essentially 1558-1748 © 2017 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission. See http://www.ieee.org/publications_standards/publications/rights/index.html for more information.