Effects of spot size on biomarker levels of field-collected dried blood spots: A new algorithm for exact dried blood spot size measurement.

ABSTRACT:

Objectives

The quality of blood values analyzed from survey-collected dried blood spot (DBS) samples is affected by fieldwork conditions, particularly spot size. We offer an image-based algorithm that accurately measures the area of field-collected DBS and we investigate the impact of spot size on the analyzed blood marker values.

Methods

SHARE, a pan-European study, collected 24 000 DBS samples in 12 countries in its sixth wave. Our new algorithm uses photographs of the DBS samples to calculate the number of pixels of the blood-covered area to measure the spot sizes accurately. We ran regression models to examine the association of spot size and seven DBS analytes. We then compared the application of our new spot-size measures to common spot-size estimation.

Results

SUBMITTER: Groh R 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9606603 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature