3D imaging system for respiratory monitoring in pediatric intensive care environment

Abstract

Assessment of respiratory activity in pediatric intensive care unit allows a comprehensive view of the patient's condition. This allows the identification of high-risk cases for prompt and appropriate medical treatment. Numerous research works on respiration monitoring have been conducted in recent years. However, most of them are unsuitable for clinical environment or require physical contact with the patient, which limits their efficiency. In this paper, we present a novel system for measuring the breathing pattern based on a computer vision method and contactless design. Our 3D imaging system is specifically designed for pediatric intensive care environment, which distinguishes it from the other imaging methods. Indeed, previous works are mostly limited to the use of conventional video acquisition devices, in addition to not considering the constraints imposed by intensive care environment. The proposed system uses depth information captured by two (Red Green Blue-Depth) RGB-D cameras at different view angles, by considering the intensive care unit constraints. Depth information is then exploited to reconstruct a 3D surface of a patient's torso with high temporal and spatial resolution and large spatial coverage. Our system captures the motion information for the top of the torso surface as well as for its both lateral sides. For each reconstruction, the volume is estimated through a recursive subdivision of the 3D space into cubic unit elements. The volume change is then calculated through a subtraction technique between successive reconstructions. We tested our system in the pediatric intensive care unit of the Sainte-Justine university hospital center, where it was compared to the gold standard method currently used in pediatric intensive care units. The performed experiments showed a very high accuracy and precision of the proposed imaging system in estimating respiratory rate and tidal volume.

Camera-Based Method for Respiratory Rhythm Extraction From a Lateral Perspective

“…As technology evolves, the feasibility of measuring physiological variables using such methods, mixed with the technological advancements in computing hardware, makes research in these area a hot topic. Some examples that can be found in the literature of these methods comprise: continuous wave doppler radar [5], [6], depth-based cameras [7], [8], [9] or even regular consumer-grade cameras [10], [11], [12], [13] to acquire respiration.…”

Incremental effect of non-invasive oscillating device on chest physiotherapy in critically ill children: a cross-over randomised trial

“…Mean changes in respiratory tidal volume (right before and after the procedure), which will be measured either by the ventilator in mechanically invasively ventilated children or by a 3D imaging system in spontaneous breathing children with/without non-invasive mechanical ventilator such as HFNC. 11 In brief, an algorithm will calculate the tidal volume by measuring the thorax-abdomen difference in volume between end of expiration and inspiration, from a camera that acquires RGB-D infant's videos (colour plus depth). Moreover, video recordings are synchronised with the hospital timeserver, therefore synchronised with all other acquisitions such as vital signs, measurements in ventilator and blood gas performed at the PICU.…”

“…The details of the system and the methods are described in the reference manuscript. 11 We will quantify the variability of EtCO 2 waveform. We could hypothesise that the better the oscillationed air conducts across the chest wall and lung parenchyma, the larger the baseline EtCO 2 variability can be observed from the baseline waveform.…”

Automatic non-contact monitoring of the respiratory rate of neonates using a structured light camera

“…There are two approaches using a structured light camera which have been tested with neonates. The first one requires two cameras and calculates the breathing volume [30,31]. Out of the volume change the respiratory rate is estimated.…”