access icon free Thermal image processing for real-time non-contact respiration rate monitoring

A real-time thermal imaging based, non-contact respiration rate monitoring method was developed. It measured the respiration related skin surface temperature changes under the tip of the nose. Facial tracking was required as head movements caused the face to appear in different locations in the recorded images over time. The algorithm detected the tip of the nose and then, a region just under it was selected. The pixel values in this region in successive images were processed to determine respiration rate. The segmentation method, used as part of the facial tracking, was evaluated on 55,000 thermal images recorded from 14 subjects with different extent of head movements. It separated the face from image background in all images. However, in 11.7% of the images, a section of the neck was also included, but this did not cause an error in determining respiration rate. The method was further evaluated on 15 adults, against two contact respiration rate monitoring methods that tracked thoracic and abdominal movements. The three methods gave close respiration rates in 12 subjects but in 3 subjects, where there were very large head movements, the respiration rates did not match.

Inspec keywords: image segmentation; infrared imaging; object tracking; patient monitoring; image motion analysis; medical image processing; temperature measurement; skin

Other keywords: image segmentation method; thermal image processing; contact respiration rate monitoring methods; thoracic movement tracking; head movements; real-time noncontact respiration rate monitoring method; abdominal movement tracking; respiration related skin surface temperature measurement; facial tracking

Subjects: Biomedical measurement and imaging; Thermometry; Optical, image and video signal processing; Medical and biomedical uses of fields, radiations, and radioactivity; health physics; Thermal variables measurement; Patient diagnostic methods and instrumentation; Computer vision and image processing techniques; Biology and medical computing

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