Samsung’s Antioxidant Index on Galaxy Watch8 transforms what once seemed like science fiction into everyday technology. In five seconds, a thumb scan returns carotenoid levels – the industry’s first measurable nutrition index.^[1]

By miniaturising lab-grade sensor technology, the feature turns your diet into an actionable metric for healthier aging. Establishing this new benchmark in wearable health tracking required years of intensive R&D, countless prototypes and unwavering grit.

Breaking New Ground in Nutrition Tracking

Back in 2018, Samsung saw a critical gap in wearables: we could count steps and calories, yet there was no simple way to measure how our diet impacted our health. Deeper nutritional insights were locked behind expensive and time-consuming lab tests, out of reach for many people.

As people live longer, the focus is shifting from simply increasing lifespan to improving the quality of those additional years.

“In this context, antioxidation naturally gains attention as a method to slow down aging,” explains Dr. Hyojee Joung, a Seoul National University public health nutrition expert who guided parts of the tech’s development. “If antioxidant management is neglected, Reactive Oxygen Species (ROS) accumulate in the body, increasing the risk of chronic diseases such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes and cancer.”

This realisation made antioxidants the cornerstone of Samsung’s mission. Engineers and scientists focused on carotenoids – key antioxidants and proven indicators of fruit and vegetable intake – to create a device small enough to sit on your wrist, yet powerful enough to turn complex antioxidant data into simple, actionable health insights for everyone.

The first prototype of the spectroscopy-based antioxidant sensor

A clinical-ready version of the sensor

A prototype designed for use in skincare products

Challenge #1: How to Shrink the Lab-Grade Sensor Technology

From day one, the dream of a nutrition-tracking wearable hit an immediate snag: traditional methods for measuring carotenoid levels like Raman spectroscopy are laser-based, non-invasive and precise, but rely on bulky machines that are far from wearable. So, the team’s first mission was to shrink the lab-grade tech into a coin-sized sensor.

After seven years of rigorous testing and optimising since the first prototype, the team developed the miniaturised sensor, a groundbreaking tech that combines multi-wavelength LEDs with a custom photodetector array to provide carotenoid readings in a compact design.

“Our breakthrough was integrating reflectance spectroscopy with LEDs, which allowed us to miniaturise the technology while maintaining a high level of accuracy,” explains Jinyoung Park, a developer from Digital Health Team at Samsung Electronics.

Antioxidant sensor LED-PD sensor modules

Unlike lasers, which emit a sharp, narrow wavelength, LEDs emit a broader wavelength range. By analysing how much light is absorbed by the skin at multiple wavelengths through photodiodes,^[2] the watch estimates carotenoid levels with impressive accuracy. The advanced algorithms that continuously calibrate in real-time also support precision while delivering personalised insights to each user.

The LED-PD Watch prototype testbed

Challenge #2: How to Ensure the Tech Reaches Everyone

Creating a coin-sized carotenoid sensor was a major milestone, but the next challenge was ensuring it could work accurately and reliably across diverse skin types, making it truly accessible to everyone.

To overcome challenges like melanin interference in darker skin tones, Samsung’s engineers opted to use the fingertip for measurements since it has the least melanin across all ethnic groups. They also added simple tweaks, like light fingertip pressure during scans, which helps temporarily reduce blood flow and hemoglobin interference, making the results more accurate.

Extensive trials conducted at Samsung Medical Centre, included hundreds of participants, validating the sensor’s performance. This paved the way for a feature that seamlessly transitioned from the lab to users worldwide, offering an inclusive solution designed for everyday life.

How It Works

Carotenoids are the natural red, yellow, and green pigments found in fruits and vegetables. Since our bodies can’t produce carotenoids on their own, the levels stored in the body offer a clear snapshot of how much fruit and vegetables someone has been eating.

This is where your Antioxidant Index score comes in, reflecting your carotenoid levels based on these categories:

• Very low: Less than 50% of the daily WHO recommendation of 400g per day.
• Low: Between 50%–100%.
• Optimal: 100% or more.

“Skin carotenoids metabolise and accumulatein tissues gradually, so short-term changes in fruit and vegetable intake won’t immediately appear in the score,” explains Dr. Hyojee Joung. “Our research shows that increased carotenoid intake leads to a meaningful rise in skin carotenoid levels after about one to two weeks, making the Index a valuable tool for tracking consistent, long-term dietary habits.”

Lifestyle factors like sleep quality, stress levels, and physical activity also influence the Index, making it a well-rounded indicator of overall health. Paired with other Galaxy Watch8 features like sleep coaching, activity tracking and Vascular Load monitoring, the Antioxidant Index offers a holistic view of your well-being, empowering smarter decisions for healthier aging. ^[1]

The Antioxidant index feature measures carotenoid levels in seconds with the sensor on the back of the Galaxy Watch8 and provides additional nutritional insights on paired Galaxy smartphones.

Your Health, Reimagined

“New wearable sensors can play a role in helping people build healthy eating habits by tracking and encouraging sufficient daily intake of fruits and vegetables,” says Professor Yoonho Choi from Samsung Medical Centre. “Over time, this simple practice can help prevent some cancers and other age-related diseases, making it a very effective way to support long-term health.”

Antioxidants are an emerging area of focus, but research has been limited due to the challenges of accurate measurement. Galaxy Watch8’s Antioxidant Index goes beyond current industry developments and delivers meaningful innovation.

Samsung’s ability to measure antioxidant levels with precision, acknowledged by experts as a benchmark for future research, represents a breakthrough in health monitoring. By helping users identify risks early and take proactive steps towards better health, Samsung is paving the way for a smarter, more proactive approach to wellness and redefining the role of wearables in preventative healthcare.

^{[1] The Galaxy Watch 8 series is not a medical/therapeutic device. It solely intended for fitness and wellness purposes only and is not intended for use in detection, diagnosis, treatment of any medical condition. The result is for your personal reference only. Please consult a medical professional for advice.}

^{[2] Photodiodes are semiconductor devices that convert light into electrical signals.}

Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. today announced a new Open Innovation Initiative at the Samsung Developer Conference 2023 (SDC23) in San Francisco. Collaborating with the MIT(Massachusetts Institute of Technology) Media Lab, Brigham & Women’s Hospital, Tulane University School of Medicine and Samsung Medical Center, the new research program will explore enhancements to the digital health ecosystem and new approaches to wellness. With the research findings from these collaborations, Samsung will strive to develop its technology further to support the healthcare industry, expand understanding of individuals’ minds and bodies and unlock the full wellness potential of personal devices.

“Around the world, innovation and transformational health research are being fostered by leading institutions in collaboration with Samsung,” said Hon Pak, Vice President and Head of the Digital Health Team, MX Business at Samsung Electronics. “In addition to our own deep investments in health research, we are sourcing exemplary, talented industry leaders to collaborate with. We are excited to be working with prestigious institutions to explore new health technologies and novel perspectives on wellness.”

Discovering Deeper Sleep With the MIT Media Lab

In collaboration with the MIT Media Lab, Samsung aims to explore new digital profiles for monitoring and improving sleep.

“There’s an ever-growing understanding of how poor sleep negatively impacts both individuals and society at large. Wearable sleep tracking solutions may provide many potential offerings to improve our sleep in the future,” said the MIT Media Lab Professor Pattie Maes, who is also a principal investigator on the collaboration. “We want to go beyond what is currently possible—to investigate more unique sleep profiles, to better personalize sleep interventions for users, and to explore better models for sleep regularity, homeostasis and circadian rhythm.”

Quantifying Resilience and Frailty With Brigham & Women’s Hospital

By examining Galaxy Watch biometric data, Samsung will work with Brigham & Women’s Hospital to explore how clarifying the twin concepts of resilience and frailty can build more effective, personalized pictures of individuals’ health.

“Through our work with Samsung, we are exploring how to put concepts like resilience and frailty into quantifiable terms and investigate how seemingly disparate physiologic systems affect each other,” said Dr. Bruce Levy, Interim Chair, Department of Medicine and Chief, Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine at Brigham & Women’s Hospital. “We aim to give people actionable insights to maximize their resilience from a stressor, leveraging wearable sensors technology, which offers a unique opportunity to map individual trajectories of recovery or deterioration.”

Confronting Cardiovascular Disease With Tulane University School of Medicine

In partnership with Tulane University School of Medicine, Samsung will utilize the Galaxy Watch’s BioActive sensor to monitor a range of cardiovascular disease indicators.

“Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death worldwide,” said Dr. Nassir Marrouche, principal investigator of the study and Director of the Tulane Research Innovation for Arrhythmia Discovery at Tulane University School of Medicine. “By combining our extensive expertise in cardiovascular disease, Samsung’s BioActive sensor technology and data-driven machine learning approaches, we aim to unlock a significant, latent body of data to help better predict who’s at risk for hospitalization, get them treatment faster and ultimately improve health outcomes.”

New, Multi-Domain Approaches With the Samsung Medical Center

Working closely with the Samsung Medical Center, Samsung is researching multi-domain healthcare with the aim of developing an integrated analysis data platform and advanced algorithms for abnormal symptom notification.

“This new collaboration will study new methods and systems spanning heart health, sleep and mindfulness utilizing personalized dashboards and dynamic, multi-domain platforms,” said Seung Woo Park, President and CEO, Samsung Medical Center. “Leveraging both Samsung’s comprehensive services and wide operational capacity and Samsung Medical Center’s expertise and clinical research facilities, the partnership aims to develop an algorithm and build a platform to better monitor and give insights on users’ heart health, sleep, mental health and more.”

Through these efforts, Samsung hopes to discover new possibilities for wearables in digital health and deliver diverse and enhanced health services for users and beyond. Samsung will present more details about the Open Innovation Initiative, its expansive health and wellbeing ecosystem and more as part of SDC23.

About Brigham & Women’s Hospital

Brigham and Women’s Hospital is a founding member of Mass General Brigham and a teaching affiliate of Harvard Medical School. With nearly 1,000 inpatient beds, approximately 50,000 inpatient stays, and over 2.6 million outpatient encounters annually, clinicians across the Brigham provide compassionate, high-quality care in virtually every medical and surgical specialty to patients locally, regionally, nationally and around the world. An international leader in basic, clinical, and translational research, Brigham and Women’s Hospital has nearly 5,000 scientists, including physician-investigators, renowned biomedical researchers and faculty supported by nearly $750 million in funding. The Brigham’s medical preeminence and service to the community dates to 1832, with the opening of the Boston Lying In, one of the nation’s first maternity hospitals designed to care for women unable to afford in-home medical care. Its merger with the Free Hospital for Women resulted in the Boston Hospital for Women in 1966. In 1980, the Boston Hospital for Women, the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital and the Robert Breck Brigham Hospital officially merged to become Brigham and Women’s Hospital. With nearly 21,000 employees across the Brigham family – including the Brigham and Women’s Physicians Organization and Brigham and Women’s Faulkner Hospital – that rich history is the foundation for our commitment to providing superb care for some of the most complex cases, pursuing breakthroughs in biomedical research, training the next generation of health care providers, and serving the local and global community.

About Tulane University School of Medicine

Founded in 1834 to lead the advancement of science and the treatment of disease, Tulane University School of Medicine continues that mission today. Tulane aims to be a distinctive, preeminent research-intensive medical school, transforming health through discovery, lifelong learning, and patient-centered health care.