Non-touch optical detection of vital signs

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-2016000335-A1
Application number	US-201414324235-A
Country	US
Kind code	A1
Filing date	Jul 6, 2014
Priority date	Jul 4, 2014
Publication date	Jan 7, 2016
Grant date	—

Abstract

A non-touch thermometer senses temperature from a digital infrared sensor is described. A microprocessor is operably coupled to a camera from which patient vital signs are determined. A digital signal representing a temperature without conversion from analog is transmitted from the digital infrared sensor. A temporal variation of images is generated from which a heart rate and the respiratory rate can be determined and displayed or stored.

First claim

1 . An apparatus of motion amplification to communicate biological vital signs, the apparatus comprising:
a cropper that is operable to receive at least two images and that is operable to crop each of the images to exclude a border area of the images, generating at least two cropped images; a skin-pixel-identifier that is operably coupled to the cropper and that identifies pixel values that are representative of the skin in at least two cropped images; a spatial bandpass filter that is operably coupled to the skin-pixel-identifier and that processes output of the skin-pixel-identifier; a regional facial clusterial module that is operably coupled to the spatial bandpass filter and that applies spatial clustering to the output of the spatial bandpass filter; a temporal bandpass filter that is operably coupled to the regional facial clusterial module and that is applied to output of the regional facial clusterial module; a temporal-variation identifier that is operably coupled to the temporal bandpass filter and that identifies temporal variation of the output of the temporal bandpass filter; a vital-sign generator that is operably coupled to the temporal-variation identifier that generates at least one vital sign from the temporal variation; and a display device that is operably coupled to the vital-sign generator that is operable to display the at least one vital sign.

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3 . The apparatus of claim 1 , wherein the regional facial clusterial module further comprises:
a fuzzy clusterer.

4 . The apparatus of claim 1 , wherein the regional facial clusterial module further comprises:
a K-cluster.

5 . The apparatus of claim 1 , wherein the regional facial clusterial module further comprises:
an expectation-maximizer.

6 . The apparatus of claim 1 , wherein the regional facial clusterial module further comprises:
a seed point based clustering apparatus.

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13 . The apparatus of claim 1 further comprising:
a storage device that is operably coupled to the vital-sign generator and that is operable to store the at least one vital sign in a volatile memory.

14 . The apparatus of claim 1 further comprising:
a storage device that is operably coupled to the vital-sign generator and that is operable to store the at least one vital sign in a volatile memory.

15 . The apparatus of claim 1 further comprising:
a storage device that is operably coupled to the vital-sign generator and that is operable to transmit the at least one vital sign to another apparatus.

16 . A non-touch thermometer to measure temperature, the non-touch thermometer comprising:
a microprocessor; a battery operably coupled to the microprocessor; a single button operably coupled to the microprocessor; a camera operably coupled to the microprocessor and providing at least two images to the microprocessor; a display device operably coupled to the microprocessor, wherein the microprocessor including a pixel-examination-module configured to examine pixel values of the at least two images, a temporal-variation module to determine temporal variation of the pixel values between the at least two images being below a particular threshold, a signal processing module configured to amplify the temporal variation resulting in amplified temporal variation, and a visualizer to visualize a pattern of flow of blood in the amplified temporal variation in the at least two images.

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22 . The non-touch thermometer of claim 16 , wherein the signal processing module is further configured to amplify variations of the pixel values between the at least two images.

23 . The non-touch thermometer of claim 16 , wherein the signal processing is temporal processing.

24 . The non-touch thermometer of claim 23 , wherein the temporal processing is a bandpass filter.

25 . The non-touch thermometer of claim 24 , wherein the bandpass filter is configured to analyze frequencies over time.

26 . The non-touch thermometer of claim 16 , wherein applying signal processing includes spatial processing.

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Assignees

• Khachaturian Mark
• Smith Michael G

Inventors

• Khachaturian Mark
• Smith Michael G

Classifications

• G06T7/0012 Primary

  Biomedical image inspection · CPC title

• A61B5/0261 Primary

  using optical means, e.g. infrared light · CPC title

• G06F18/23

  Clustering techniques · CPC title

• G01J5/025

  Interfacing a pyrometer to an external device or network; User interface · CPC title

• G06F3/042

  by opto-electronic means · CPC title