Pilot study of the eye colour & serum bilirubin level in newborns (v1)
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Pilot study of the relationship between the eye colour and serum bilirubin level and the development of a smartphone app for neonatal jaundice screening (Student Study)
IRAS ID
130932
Contact name
Judith Meek
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
University College London
Research summary
Neonatal jaundice is a common condition among newborn infants, caused by an increased bilirubin level in the blood and tissues. Bilirubin is yellow in colour and jaundiced infants can therefore appear to have yellow colouration in their skin and sclera. Most jaundice is benign but an unusually high level of bilirubin (hyperbilirubinemia) can affect the newborn’s health, and in severe cases, may even cause brain damage or death. A timely identification of hyperbilirubinemia is therefore crucial. Most babies develop jaundice over the first week of their lives. However, many hospitals have the policy to send home the mother and baby, who have no other complications, soon after birth. It is therefore left to the community midwife to identify potential hyperbilirubinemia during the home visits by visually inspecting the infant’s skin colour. This requires a high level of experience and the lighting can also change the human perception of colour, affecting the midwife’s judgement. For dark skinned babies clinical assessment can be especially unreliable. The project’s aim is to develop a smartphone App to quantify the serum bilirubin level in the newborn so that midwifes and parents can have a simple way to identify hyperbilirubinemia in the community. The App will exploit the smartphone’s built-in camera to capture a photo of the infant’s eye which is less susceptible to the influence of other pigments such as melanin and haemoglobin than skin. With an automatic algorithm, the sclera will be identified and its base colours extracted to form a new colorimetric measure as an estimate of the serum bilirubin level. Up to 200 newborn term infants of different ages will be recruited in the neonatal unit and outpatient department of UCL Hospitals. With these data, a new colorimetric measure to predict serum bilirubin level will be developed and used in the App.
REC name
London - Bromley Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
13/LO/1853
Date of REC Opinion
28 Jan 2014
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion