Development of a smartphone-based pupillometer for neuro-ophthalmological diseases screening

Over the last two decades pupillometry gained a renewed interest, due to the discovery of intrinsically photosensitive retinal ganglion cells (ipRGCs) and their function in pupil light reflex (PLR). This technique is usually used to assess patient’s neurological state and has been researched as a screening tool for neuro-ophthalmological diseases. Several automated pupillometers have been developed, as they allow a quantitative measure of PLR, but most of them are expensive and not portable, which reduces their possibility to be a widespread screening tool. Taking advantage of low price and accessible smartphone technology, a smartphone-based pupillometer was developed in this work. An Android application was developed that allows pupil’s dynamic video recording and its processing for pupil detection. The preliminary tests made to validate the application and the algorithms have shown that the proposed system is a promising tool for a simple, inexpensive and portable pupillometry.