Neonatal non-contact respiratory monitoring based on real-time infrared thermography

Abstract

BackgroundMonitoring of vital parameters is an important topic in neonatal daily care. Progress in computational intelligence and medical sensors has facilitated the development of smart bedside monitors that can integrate multiple parameters into a single monitoring system. This paper describes non-contact monitoring of neonatal vital signals based on infrared thermography as a new biomedical engineering application. One signal of clinical interest is the spontaneous respiration rate of the neonate. It will be shown that the respiration rate of neonates can be monitored based on analysis of the anterior naris (nostrils) temperature profile associated with the inspiration and expiration phases successively.ObjectiveThe aim of this study is to develop and investigate a new non-contact respiration monitoring modality for neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) using infrared thermography imaging. This development includes subsequent image processing (region of interest (ROI) detection) and optimization. Moreover, it includes further optimization of this non-contact respiration monitoring to be considered as physiological measurement inside NICU wards.ResultsContinuous wavelet transformation based on Debauches wavelet function was applied to detect the breathing signal within an image stream. Respiration was successfully monitored based on a 0.3°C to 0.5°C temperature difference between the inspiration and expiration phases.ConclusionsAlthough this method has been applied to adults before, this is the first time it was used in a newborn infant population inside the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU). The promising results suggest to include this technology into advanced NICU monitors.

Remote monitoring of breathing dynamics using infrared thermography

“…They require attachments of sensors to the patient, leading to discomfort, stress and even to soreness, particularly in small children [10]. In general, monitoring of BR can be performed by (1) measuring chest or chestabdomen movement with respiratory belt transducers [11,12], (2) detecting acoustic signals of the upper airway which occur due to turbulent airflow [13][14][15], (3) metering electrical impedances of the thorax (e.g.…”

“…Therefore, new monitoring solutions based on Doppler radar [1] and imaging sensors (visible [11], midwave infrared [12] and long wave infrared imaging sensors [10,20]) have been being proposed and developed.…”

Thermo-Management in Neonatal Care: Future Needs

“…in Kangoroo care. With this method even contactless monitoring of respiration rate is possible in addition inferred from temperature changes at the nostrils [8]. However, absolute temperature measurements are not feasible currently due to the unknown emissivity of the skin.…”

Estimation of respiration rate using an accelerometer and thermal camera in eGlasses

“…Some remote methods use analysis of video sequences recorded from the chest region [14] looking for respiration-related movements. Those recordings are typically performed using visible light cameras [15] and infrared cameras [16] [17]. Thermal recordings were typically performed using cameras with good spatial resolution [18] [19] performing respiratory rate analysis in the frequency domain.…”