Development of a smartphone-based sensor for urine protein measurement

Abstract

Proteinuria is the presence of proteins in urine above a certain threshold. Because proteinuria is a common finding in primary care practice, there exists a large body of research regarding the underlying conditions indicated by different types of proteinuria, the pathological thresholds and the measurement techniques that provide the most accurate results. This thesis is focused toward finding a novel, inexpensive method for proteinuria detection in home or point-of-care testing. The method proposed is based on smartphone-acquired image colorimetry where the color of a urine sample mixed with the Bradford reagent, an assay that changes color upon binding to protein, is evaluated. A test platform is also developed for the calibration of illumination conditions and a project-oriented coding implementation is described in OpenCV.