Oximeter

Oximeter uses your phone's camera and flash to read the amount of oxygen carried by your body's red blood cells. You can view this data on the phone or stream it to other devices and experiments.

Oximeters work by looking at the amount of red light absorbed by the red blood cells in your body. The more oxygen the cells carry, the less red light is absorbed. To use this app, press your phone's camera and flash firmly against the area where you want to measure oxygenation and start the app. The app will display the oxygenation level and a URL to retrieve the data stream from other devices.

Note:This is not a medical oximeter and does not provide % oxygen saturation or SPO2 (there is too much variance between devices to do this accurately). The oxygenation scale reflects relative readings (i.e. increases or decreases in oxygenation over time).

In some phones the flash LED may heat up with prolonged use. Do not place the phone over skin that lacks normal sensation when using the app.

EXPERIMENTS TO TRY
Place the phone over a muscle and observe changes in oxygenation as the muscle is contracted or relaxed.

Place the phone against the forehead. Can you detect changes in oxygenation associated with performing a mental task?

Try to detect naturally occurring oscillations in blood flow (Mayer waves) using the oximeter.