2020 IEEE 5th Middle East and Africa Conference on Biomedical Engineering (MECBME)

Novel Approach of a Smart Medical Mirror System for

Medical Applications
Shady HALABY1, George KHOURY1, Roy ABI ZEID DAOU1,2,, Ali HAYEK3 and Josef BOERCSOEK3
1
Lebanese German University, Biomedical technologies department, Jounieh, Lebanon, r.abizeiddaou@lgu.edu.lb
2
MART, Learning, Education and Training Center, Chananiir, Lebanon, roydaou@mart-ler.org
3
Department of Computer Architecture and System Programming Faculty of Electrical Engineering /Computer Science
University of Kassel, Germany, {ali.hayek; j.boercsoek}@uni-kassel.de

Abstract – Humans always face problems when it comes to
medical check-up due to lack of time or laziness. However, lots of
medical problems and fatal illnesses can be detected at earlier
stages if the person is subject to continuous check-up. Hence, the
idea of the proposed system is to design a tool enabling the
measurement of the basic vital signs with the smallest effort
possible from the person’s side. Thus, this paper proposes a
smart medical mirror system that acts as a normal mirror and
also delivers the basic vital signs of the user such as the heart
rate, SPO2, body temperature, and Body Mass Index (BMI). The
system takes five seconds for initialization and starts the
measurements and displays the results. The user will not lose
time as this check-up can be performed every morning while the
person is wearing his clothes and getting ready to start his daily
activities. The system was tested by multiple users having
different body statuses. The recorded values showed very small
differences with the exact ones. At the end, the system was able to
meet the user specifications concerning its portability, sensitivity,
accuracy and, most importantly, its low cost.
Keywords – Vital Signs measurement; BMI; SPO2; Heart Rate;
Medical Checkup; Smart Mirror;
I. INTRODUCTION
Nowadays, while medical science is well advanced and
highly accurate, sickness symptoms are easily detected in a
person’s body. While these symptoms add up together, a
disease or a disorder can be diagnosed systematically. Thus,
this disease is well treated and cured in most cases. To
decrease the chances of having a disease, people are usually
encouraged to perform continuous medical check-ups.
However, despite all the encouragement provided, whether
through advertisements on television, flyers, and even phone
messages from the ministry of health, a large number of
people are not performing these check-ups. Some are aware of
the high importance of medical check-ups; others might not
have the time according to their opinions or are not even
interested. Considering the population who doesn’t follow up
on its own health, if medical check-ups are easy to be
performed daily and alone at home, would they change their
attitude regarding this issue?
At home, there are a lot of items, some that are used
frequently, and others that are used rarely. When a person
wakes up every morning, the first thing one does after getting
out of bed is looking in the bathroom’s mirror. A mirror is one
of the most used items in homes on a daily basis. Mirrors are
used by people to check their looks so they can fix them if
needed. Well, what about the inner issues related to health?
What if a mirror becomes capable of analysing the medical
details of the user and providing him with information related
to his health?
In this project, such a mirror will be created having the
capability of analysing the user’s basic vital signs. This mirror
will include a smart interface with its user. It will detect his
presence and start the analysis phase. It will measure the
user’s heart rate, body temperature, height, weight, and Body-
Mass Index (BMI); it will measure the room temperature as
well. All these values will be displayed automatically on the
mirror. Thus, the user will be provided with a device that
performs a basic medical check-up, during a short period of
time at any time, and displays the results in front of him
immediately. This check-up will make the user aware of his
own health and avoid some diseases that can be well treated in
their early stages. Added to that, one can add vital monitoring
sensors for this system as the processing unit was chosen large
enough to accept additional inputs and outputs.
Latest studies show that the rate of people dying from a
sudden factor is increasing worldwide and consists more than
50% of the total death causes [1]. Added to that, lack of regular
medical tests was shown to be among the highest causes to
have sudden death [2] [3], in particular heart attacks [4] [5].
The concept of a smart mirror is considered very new. Few
inventions related to this concept were made. Sun et al.
worked on a smart mirror based on a Raspberry Pi where they
included a displayed time and date. Their concept was based
on a connection to Wi-Fi where they retrieved daily updates of
time and date [6]. As for other related projects to this proposed
system, one can propose the below scientific publications.
Kashish et al. developed a low power pulse oximeter in
purpose of detecting hypoxemia. Their project was based on
an Arduino processing system [7].
Shrenika et al. worked on an ultrasonic Arduino electronic
system where the sensor is placed at the top of the water tank
and computes the distance between it and the water surface
[8].
Boopathi et al. developed an Arduino monitoring system
that computes heart rate, ECG, temperature, and SPO2 for

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 2020 IEEE 5th Middle East and Africa Conference on Biomedical Engineering (MECBME)

cases of pregnant women in India that have to travel long to digital ones. A second processing unit is deployed in order
distances to perform check-up [9]. to make the required calculations, compare the resulting
measurements to the thresholds and display them on the
Yousof & Hau proposed a portable and mini home-based
mirror. In fact, one could have used one microcontroller,
vital sign monitor, named myVitalGear, which can measure
containing the (Analog-to-Digital Converter) ADC feature but
heart rate using electrocardiogram (ECG), body temperature
we have decided to use the Raspberry Pi to compute the
and blood oxygen saturation (SPO2) accurately [10].
calculations for the reasons that will explained in details in the
Celler & Sparks identified some technical challenges in the next section. As this latter does not have the ADC feature, the
acquisition of high-quality biometric signals from use of an integrated circuit/processing unit was necessary in
unsupervised patients at home by identifying new technical order to deliver digital data to the Raspberry Pi controller.
solutions and user interfaces, and proposing new measurement
As for the communication tool between the different
modalities and signal processing techniques for increasing the
electrical components, wires were used because of the
quality and value of vital signs monitoring at home [11].
physical placement of them. However, the use of the
Selvaraj designed some disposable wireless sensors for Raspberry Pi could help if wireless sensors are to be
continuous and long-term monitoring of senior subjects over implemented in an advanced realization step because of the
consecutive 50-days in their home setting. These sensors have communication protocols and tools available within this
demonstrated high performance over their 3-day wear cycle, processing unit.
great compliance, and positive user feedback on simplicity of
At the end, the date and time are initially set and they are
use and usability [12].
also displayed on the mirror.
Jinmeng & Xiaoming designed a medical monitoring
method for smart home taking advantage of the ZigBee short-
range wireless communication technology, and achieving a
continuous, real-time and dynamic detection of the human
vital signs parameters, including electrocardiograph (ECG),
oxygen saturation, blood pressure detections. This system also
aims to provide users with independent, health, safety,
convenience and the continuing human medical monitoring
services [13].
Against this background, the proposed paper presents a
novel way to monitor the vital signs of any person using a tool
that exists in every household and that is usually used, at least
once per day, by anyone. The main constraints of the realized
system is to be sensitive, accurate, customized and of a low
cost.
This new system aims to prevent diseases as cardiac and
overweight problems as the continuous monitoring of the vital
signs should yield in the consultation of medical doctors in Fig. 1. Block diagram of the system
case of bad recorded values.
This paper is divided as follow: in section II, the block III. HARDWARE DESIGN
diagram of the whole project is presented. In section III, the In this section, the used sensors, the processing units, and
hardware design part is introduced going through by the the mechanical design of the whole system will be shown.
sensors, the processing unit and the mechanical design of the
mirror. Section IV presents the coding of the processing units. A. Sensors
In section V, the assembly and the validation of the system are The main parameters that led to the choice of the sensors
proposed. Finally, section VI concludes this paper and are mainly the size, the cost, the availability, the accuracy, the
proposes some future works. safety and the operational supply voltage. As for the sensors,
four types are required for this system: the height, the weight,
II. BLOCK DIAGRAM the temperature, the heart rate and the SPO2.

Figure 1 shows the block diagram of the proposed system.
The sensors in use aim to measure the height and the weight of
the user in order to calculate and display the Body Mass Index
(BMI). The system also determines the heart rate, the SPO2,
and the body temperature.
All these parameters are first processed using a first
processing unit that aims to convert the sensors analog values
To measure the height of a person, many options are
available; however, the proximity sensors will be mainly used.
They are available as photoelectric sensors, ultrasonic sensors,
capacitive sensors, and inductive sensors [14]. All these
sensors mainly rely on transmitting and receiving
corresponding waves whether infrared rays, sound waves,
microwaves, or magnetic field waves. Each type of sensors is
used for specific application depending on the response time

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 2020 IEEE 5th Middle East and Africa Conference on Biomedical Engineering (MECBME)
needed and the type of object to hit. For this system, the HC-
SR04 ultrasonic sensor was deployed since it best fits our case
regarding measurement ranges, its low noise, and output form.
The principle of this ultrasonic sensor is based on sending
ultrasound waves and receiving the echo waves reflected back
to it [15]. Through that, it could detect an object in its range
and the distance between the sensor and the object is defined
as shown in the equation below:
∗
= , (1)
where the time is defined based on the delay between the
transmitted and the received wave and the speed of sound in
air is equal to 340 m/sec. Thus, the distance will be delivered
in m.
Figure 2 clarify the placement of the sensor and the
conditions to be aware of while measuring the height of the
person. The most initial point is that the person must be placed
in a straight line with the sensor in order to get an accurate
value.
Fig. 2. Conditions to be aware of while using an ultrasonic sensor
Concerning the weight measurement, few choices of
sensors were available. Since all of them have the same
functioning principle, we chose the HX-711 due to its
popularity, easy setup, 28 bit resolution, and its accuracy [16].
The weight sensing assembly is a combination of four load
cells that can handle a max weight of fifty kilograms each
connected to the weight sensor. Figure 3 shows the placement
of these sensors together. The load cells, when put under
stress, produce varying resistances. These resistances produce
variable voltages. The variations in the voltages are then
converted to values that are added together to give the weight
value.
Fig. 3. Arrangement of the load cells to measure the weight of the user
For temperature measuring, lots of available temperature
sensors can perform the job. Two important specifications are
the shape and the resolution. Thus, the DS18B20 sensor was
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chosen since it is a probe-like sensor that is easily held by the
hand or placed under the arm pit [17]. This sensor is
characterized by its easy setup, low tolerance, accuracy,
linearity within the functional temperatures and desired
temperature range from -10°C to 80°C. It can be directly
connected to the analog pin of the processor without using any
calibration circuit.
At the end, concerning the SPO2 and the heart rate
measurements, the MAX30105 sensor was used in order to
measure these two vital signs at the same time. This sensor is
characterized by its high accuracy, low noise, and I2C
communication mode. It is capable of operating within a
temperature range from -40°C to 85°C. It includes an ambient
light rejection feature that enhances the measurement
precision in presence of light [18]. Several readings are
performed before calculating the average value and displaying
it on the mirror. The main problem that can encounter the
functioning of this sensor is the fingers displacement of the
user. In fact, if the user does not press his thumb on the sensor,
no values (or inaccurate values) will be obtained. Another
technical problem caused by this sensor is the memory needed
for processing as each reading requires lots of memory space.
This must be taken into consideration when choosing the
processing unit.
B. Processing Unit
In order to make the calculations and to capture, analyze
and display the vital signs and measurements using this
system, several processing units could have been used. For
this system, the processors used are an Arduino board and a
Raspberry Pi 3 model B board.
The Arduino board was used because of its desired number
of input/output pins, memory size, serial communication, I2C
communication and, most importantly, the Analog-to-Digital
Converter (ADC) option. The Raspberry Pi 3 was used
because of its high power CPU and GPU and its large memory
size.
The Arduino board is responsible of empowering the
sensors, receiving their outputs, and processing the values
based on the coded program. The raspberry pi is responsible
for the calculation of BMI, receiving the outputs of the
Arduino boards, and displaying all the data on the screen
based on its coded program.
In fact, one could have use only one microcontroller.
However, the Arduino is used for the ADC whereas the main
purpose of the Raspberry Pi is to display the outputs on the
screen as it is easier to use the Python programming language
for the tools it contains for the display. The communication
between both processors is serial (USART interface).
C. Mechanical Design
The inner assembly is composed of the mirror glass, the
display screen, the two microcontroller boards, a power
supply, some electronic circuits related to the screen, two
 2020 IEEE 5th Middle East and Africa Conference on Biomedical Engineering (MECBME)

wooden ribs to hold the components in place, and the electric
plug wire. As shown in figures 4 and 5, some dimensions
related to the inner assembly and the screen is placed line to
line with the mirror for achieving best display. The processors
and power supply are separated aside to avoid any distortion
in the screen display.
the background and font colors, the font style and size, and the
position of every word or figure on the screen. The raspberry
Pi also has the option of displaying using HDMI cable
showing a much better screen resolution. It is capable of
saving the already set time and date as well which can also be
displayed. The flowchart representing the Raspberry Pi
software program is shown in figure 7.

Fig. 4. Inner View Dimensions

Fig. 6. Flowchart of Arduino Program

Fig. 5. Inner Assembly of the System

IV. SOFTWARE DESIGN Fig. 7. Flowchart of Raspberry Pi Program

The software part relays on the coding of the

microcontrollers only. Thus, this section will be divided into
V. SYSTEM IMPLEMENTATION AND VALIDATION
two parts: the first one presenting the Arduino coding whereas
the second part showing the coding of the Raspberry Pi. Concerning the assembly phase, the mirror is placed in the
front part of the wooden frame. The screen is fixed behind the
The purpose of using the Arduino is to convert any analog
mirror with zero clearance between them. This allows the
measured values to a digital one to be sent to the Raspberry Pi.
values displayed to appear very clear. A black background is
Programming an Arduino board has an advantage of
used to reduce the chance of the screen to be seen through the
simplicity compared to other microcontrollers. The sensors
mirror. The font colors of the displayed data are used as bright
used in this project are all compatible with this processor. The
light colors such as white or beige. The screen electronics and
flowchart of figure 6 represents the Arduino software
connectors are fixed behind it as they were fixed in the
program.
screen’s original housing.
As for the Raspberry Pi, it is mainly deployed for display
control. This microcontroller has the capability of controlling

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 2020 IEEE 5th Middle East and Africa Conference on Biomedical Engineering (MECBME)
The microprocessors and the power supply however are
screwed separate from the screen and each other. The purpose
of this placement is to remove any interference between the
electronic components that may lead to the malfunctioning of
the system. Such interferences may be caused by thermal,
magnetic, and induced currents factors. Lots of space is left in
the wooden case for the purpose of easy wiring between the
components.
Two cuts are made at the bottom of the case: the first is for
the electric plug and the weight scale wires to pass through,
while the second is for the wires of the heart rate / SPO2 and
temperature sensors to pass through. The ultrasonic sensor is
fixed on the top piece with a 30 degrees tilting for its proper
function. Figures 8 and 9 represent the placement of some
components in the full assembly.
Fig. 8. Placement of Height Sensor
Fig. 9. Placement of Weight Scale
Concerning the assembly coded program, as mentioned
earlier, the mirror, when turned on, waits for the user to step
on the weight scale for five seconds. After that it starts
recording the data relative to the height and weight. The
temperature sensor and the Max30105 sensor can be used at
any time. The temperature sensor initially records the room
temperature until it is being used to measure the body
temperature. The heart rate sensor starts initially at zero until it
is being used.
All the data collected from the sensors is processed by the
Arduino boards and sent to the Raspberry Pi. Figure 10 shows
the data being displayed on the mirror screen.
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Fig. 10. Data Displayed on the Mirror
The system was tested on six people of different heights,
weights, ages, and physical fitness and appearances. The
displayed results on the mirror were validated by each user
after being compared to the values delivered by FDA (Food
and Drug Administration Agency) approved medical systems.
The results recorded for all users showed the coherence
between the outputs of both systems. A minor problem was
encountered regarding the good placement of the ultrasound
sensor in order to be able to get the exact height of the user.
Added to that, some questions were answered by the users
concerning the ease of use and the user friendly system. All
users approved the convenience of the product concerning
these two features.
VI. CONCLUSIONS AND FUTURE WORKS
This project provides a basic solution to decrease the
troubles a person goes through to get himself/herself checked.
Thus, having it at home, anyone might use it easily and in less
than a minute to check up his/her health. In addition, knowing
that this mirror can be used daily, the user has a better chance
of precaution from most malfunctions that his/her body might
encounter. Therefore, as the aim of this project was to
decrease the amount of people that are not having medical
check-up, this smart medical mirror is a successful product
that may surely attract the target audience and reach this goal.
There were many ideas or concepts that may make a great
addition to this project. Therefore, as future works, the
features that may be added as upgrades to this system are as
follows:
• Creating profiles of family members;
• Speech synthesis;
• Face detection;
• Saving recorded data of every family member in his/her
profile;
• Printer feature that prints graphs such as that of heart rate;
• Blood Glucose Level sensor;
• Blood Pressure sensor;
 2020 IEEE 5th Middle East and Africa Conference on Biomedical Engineering (MECBME)

• Connection of mirror to home internet and sending the
data to a specified doctor;
• Higher accuracy in calculation of BMI relative to a user’s
gender and age:
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