Mobile Imaging Solutions for Medical Diagnosis: Trends and Applications

Abstract

Advances in processing power, camera technologies, and mobile image analysis have made smartphones and other mobile devices, such as laptops, increasingly suitable for medical diagnosis and healthcare applications. Researchers have developed low-cost solutions for the early detection and monitoring of various health conditions, including eye and ENT diseases, malnutrition, heart rate variability, skin and oral conditions, and injuries, using images captured by non-medical devices such as smartphones and webcams. This survey examines existing research on mobile image-based medical diagnosis, with an emphasis on its potential to enable low-cost and accessible healthcare. We comparatively analyze state-of-the-art solutions across different healthcare application categories, examining their advantages and limitations. Based on this analysis, we identify desirable characteristics of mobile image-based diagnostic tools and highlight areas where existing approaches have made progress as well as areas requiring further research. We also discuss application-specific and common challenges and outline directions for future research. Overall, this study provides a comprehensive overview of mobile image-based healthcare solutions and their potential to support low-cost disease diagnosis and monitoring, particularly for underserved populations in remote and resource-constrained settings.