Noncontact Monitoring of Vital Signs with RGB and Infrared Camera and Its Application to Screening of Potential Infection

In recent years, much attention is being paid to research and development of tech - nology that provides noncontact measurement of vital signs, i.e., heart rate, respi - ration, and body temperature, which are important for understanding the state of a person’s health. As technology for sensing biological information has progressed, new biological measurement sensors have been developed successively. There have also been reports regarding methods for measuring respiration or heart rate using pressure sensors, microwave radar, air mattresses, or high-polymer piezoelectric film. The methods have wide-ranging applications, including systems for monitoring of elderly people, identification of sleep apnea, detection of patients suspected to have an infectious disease, and noncontact measurement of stress levels. In this chapter, the principles behind noncontact measurement of respiration and heartbeat using infrared/RGB facial-image analysis are discussed, along with the applications for such measurement in the detection of patients suspected to be suffering from infectious diseases.