While for several years, some people have been concerned about a potentially harmful effect of Wi-Fi waves on the human body, researchers from the National Institute of Standards and Technology, an agency of the US government, have shown the opposite , in a study published in the journal IEEE Access on December 15, that this technology could one day be used to detect respiratory diseases, reports New Atlas.

Wave alterations

To ensure the connection between router and devices, the Wi-Fi system emits waves.

However, the latter are altered by the entities it passes through, such as the human body.

As such, the analysis of Wi-Fi waves already makes it possible to count people inside a room or to identify sleeping positions.

During the Covid crisis, a team from the agency had the idea of ​​testing whether it was possible to record specific alterations in Wi-Fi waves according to certain chronic respiratory problems, such as asthma or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

"As everyone's world was turned upside down, many of us at NIST were thinking about what we could do to help," said Jason Coder, one of the team members.

AI more than 99% accurate

To test their idea, the researchers installed a mannequin simulating the breathing of a human being inside an anechoic chamber, a room that absorbs waves.

A router and a receiver device were also placed in the room in order to emit the waves and record possible variations on the alterations during the different phases of simulation of the respiratory diseases.

From this data, the team was finally able to create an artificial intelligence that would be able, under these conditions, to detect and classify a respiratory disease in a patient with a certainty rate of 99.54%.

This first experience, which has so far not been followed up, could eventually make it possible to easily develop a large-scale automated diagnostic method.

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