Smart necklace developed that could help quit smoking by detecting smoking habit
Researchers at Northwestern Medicine University (United States) have developed a smart device worn around the neck that detects smoking habit. By capturing heat signatures from thermal sensors.
The collar, called ‘SmokeMon’, completely maintains the smoker’s privacy, as it only tracks heat, not images, which is a critical factor for people to feel comfortable wearing it.
“This Goes far beyond the number of cigarettes a person smokes per day. We can detect when the cigarette is lit, when the person puts it in their mouth and takes a puff, how much they inhale, how much time passes between puffs, and how long they have the cigarette in their mouth,” he said. Nabil Alshurafa, senior researcher and associate professor of Preventive Medicine at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine.
“We can detect when you light your cigarette, when you take a puff, how much you inhale, how much time passes between puffs.”
All these details are called smoker’s topographywhich is important for two reasons. The first is that it allows scientists to measure and assess harmful carbon monoxide exposure among smokers and to gain a deeper understanding of the relationship between chemical exposure and smoking-related diseases, such as cancer, heart disease, stroke, lung disease, diabetes, COPD, emphysema and chronic bronchitis.
The second is help people in their efforts to quit smoking.understanding how the topography of smoking is related to relapse (regular re-smoking), which occurs frequently in people who quit smoking.
Suppose a former smoker takes a few puffs on a cigarette. Does five puffs or five whole cigarettes lead to a full relapse? This information can be used to predict when a person is going to relapse and when to intervene with a phone call from a health counselor, for example, or even a text or video message via smartphone to help them prevent a relapse. Scientists also plan to study the efficacy of the device in detecting puffs and the topography of e-cigarettes.
“We want to catch them before they drop completely. Once they do, it’s much harder for them to quit again. For many people trying to quit smoking, a slip is one or two cigarettes or even one puff. But a slip is not the same as a relapse (going back to smoking regularly). A person can learn from slips, realizing that he or she has not failed, just had a temporary setback. To avoid relapse, we can start focusing on how to manage triggers and cope with cravings.”detailed Alshurafa, whose work has been published in the scientific journal ‘Proceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable, and Ubiquitous Technologies’.
Worldwide, more than 8 million deaths are attributed to smoking each year. Smoking remains one of the main causes of preventable causes of disease, disability, and death in the United States, and is responsible for more than 480,000 deaths per year (or one in five deaths).
Existing devices that track smoking topography must be attached to the cigarette, which changes the way a person smokes and makes the data less reliable.
Some researchers have studied non-intrusive forms of measuring smoking, such as the use of inertial measurement unit sensors in smart watches.
However, these methods are often confused with the hand-to-mouth gestures of nonsmokers and, as a result, generate many false positives. Another option, handheld video cameras, raises privacy and stigmatization issues, limiting the applicability of camera-based approaches in natural settings.
For the study, the following were recruited. 19 volunteers who participated in 115 sessions in which scientists examined their smoking behavior in controlled and free experiments.
While smokers wore the device, the scientists trained a deep learning-based machine model to detect smoking events along with their smoking topography, including such things as the timing of a puff, the number of puffs, the duration of the puff, the volume of the puff, the interval between puffs, and the length of smoking. They also organized three focus groups with 18 smoking treatment specialists to get their opinion on the device.
“These real-time measurements can tell us where a person is in their smoking habit and to treat the patient accordingly.”
A smoking cessation specialist commented, “These real-time measurements can really help us to understand where a person is in their smoking habit and treat the patient accordingly.”
