Remote sensing of multiple vital signs using a CMOS camera-equipped infrared thermography for rapid screening of patients with influenza

Abstract

After an outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) in 2003, infrared thermography (IRT) systems were used as the border control strategies for fever screening of passengers at most major international airports. In this study, we proposed a visible/thermal image processing approach using only a CMOS camera-equipped IRT, thereby remote sensing of multiple vital signs for the rapid and accurate screening. Due to infection screening system expensive and required large-scale system structure, the system still has not reached yet the stage of widespread use. In this regard, we focused on minimum the hardware requirements to achieve a system that more suitable for real-world settings. The system displays the results via the logistic regression discriminant function derived from the heart and respiration rate, and body temperature within 10 seconds. The system achieved a sensitivity and specificity of 87.5% and 91.7%, which is notably higher compared to conventional fever based screening.