Thermal IR imaging in trauma

Abstract

In this preliminary study, several lessons were learned. The footprint of the authors' cart/tripod was too large and the focal length of their lenses too long. 1. The best way to image emergency room patients is vertically, requiring a camera which can be rolled to the bedside of the patient and observe the patient from above much as a portable X-ray unit does. This requires a wide-angle lens on the camera; 25 mm seems roughly correct. 2. Support equipment such as computers and displays need to be completely portable and operate off battery power such as a hospital-certified uninterruptible power supply. 3. A potentially very important experiment would be to use 2 or more cameras where each camera would be sensitive in different parts of the infrared spectrum, for example, one camera in the 3-5 m band and another in the 8-12 m band. This experiment would be easy to conduct provided both cameras have comparable focal length lenses and one of the two has a zoom lens. Zoom is required because not all detectors have elements on the same spacing and thus, images will be at different scales even though the lenses may have the same focal length. If the images are taken from nearly the same view point, and with similar focal lengths, they may be registered using straightforward image registration algorithms. Once registered, each pixel may then be treated as a multispectral feature and pseudo-color may reveal significant features, which single-band imaging cannot see. Furthermore, statistical pattern recognition algorithms are quite mature for such data, and may find application in computer-aided diagnosis. 4. It is absolutely essential that a study of this nature, a person in the emergency room staff be intimately involved in the study. This person, be it nurse or physician, must be interested in and excited by the potential benefit of the new technology, to the point that he/she is willing to learn how to use the equipment, how to identify potential patients for the study, and willing to train others in its use and potential.