Continuous non‐contact vital sign monitoring in neonatal intensive care unit

Abstract

Current technologies to allow continuous monitoring of vital signs in pre-term infants in the hospital require adhesive electrodes or sensors to be in direct contact with the patient. These can cause stress, pain, and also damage the fragile skin of the infants. It has been established previously that the colour and volume changes in superficial blood vessels during the cardiac cycle can be measured using a digital video camera and ambient light, making it possible to obtain estimates of heart rate or breathing rate. Most of the papers in the literature on non-contact vital sign monitoring report results on adult healthy human volunteers in controlled environments for short periods of time. The authors' current clinical study involves the continuous monitoring of pre-term infants, for at least four consecutive days each, in the high-dependency care area of the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) at the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford. The authors have further developed their video-based, non-contact monitoring methods to obtain continuous estimates of heart rate, respiratory rate and oxygen saturation for infants nursed in incubators. In this Letter, it is shown that continuous estimates of these three parameters can be computed with an accuracy which is clinically useful. During stable sections with minimal infant motion, the mean absolute error between the camera-derived estimates of heart rate and the reference value derived from the ECG is similar to the mean absolute error between the ECG-derived value and the heart rate value from a pulse oximeter. Continuous non-contact vital sign monitoring in the NICU using ambient light is feasible, and the authors have shown that clinically important events such as a bradycardia accompanied by a major desaturation can be identified with their algorithms for processing the video signal.

Waveform Analysis to Estimate Respiratory Rate

“…These physiological changes result in a waveform known as photoplethysmographic imaging (PPGi), from which vital signals such as heart rate, respiratory rate, oxygen saturation (SpO 2 ) and other can be estimated [11,29]. Figure 26.7 shows a 15-s sample of PPGi alongside PPG and IP signals measured using conventional monitoring equipment.…”

Feasibility of Contactless Pulse Rate Monitoring of Neonates using Google Glass

“…Recent trends [3][4][5][6][7] in validating camera-based pulse rate monitoring methods in neonatal clinical settings are highlighted in Table 1. The first medical study of camera-based pulse rate monitoring for neonates was reported by Scalise et al [4].…”

“…They explored different scenes with challenging conditions for 19 infants in durations of 1 to 5 mins. Klaessens et al [5], Mestha et al [6] and Villarroel et al [7] all report clinical studies of 7, 8 and 2 (2 are reported out of an ongoing study of 40) infants respectively. However, the details of the scenes recorded with challenging conditions are not reported or are removed from the analysis.…”

Ultra-Wide Patch Antenna Array Design at 60 GHz Band for Remote Vital Sign Monitoring with Doppler Radar Principle

“…vital sign monitoring devices, such as electrocardiogram (ECG), pulse oximetry and capnography, because the conventional devices need direct sensors plantation on the subject body as well as they consume comparatively much longer implementation time to start the measurements [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8]. However, the results accuracy and reliability of RVSM system need to be dealt appropriately for its real-life applications [2].…”

“…However, the results accuracy and reliability of RVSM system need to be dealt appropriately for its real-life applications [2]. RVSM finds a vast number of applications in regular and special health care, emergency services, security and defence sectors [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12].…”