Abstract
Premature infants are among the most vulnerable patients in a hospital. Due to numerous complications associated with immaturity, a continuous monitoring of vital signs with a high sensitivity and accuracy is required. Today, wired sensors are attached to the patient’s skin. However, adhesive electrodes can be potentially harmful as they can damage the very thin immature skin. Although unobtrusive monitoring systems using cameras show the potential to replace cable-based techniques, advanced image processing algorithms are data-driven and, therefore, need much data to be trained. Due to the low availability of public neonatal image data, a patient phantom could help to implement algorithms for the robust extraction of vital signs from video recordings. In this work, a camera-based system is presented and validated using a neonatal phantom, which enabled a simulation of common neonatal pathologies such as hypo-/hyperthermia and brady-/tachycardia. The implemented algorithm was able to continuously measure and analyze the heart rate via photoplethysmography imaging with a mean absolute error of 0.91 bpm, as well as the distribution of a neonate’s skin temperature with a mean absolute error of less than 0.55 °C. For accurate measurements, a temperature gain offset correction on the registered image from two infrared thermography cameras was performed. A deep learning-based keypoint detector was applied for temperature mapping and guidance for the feature extraction. The presented setup successfully detected several levels of hypo- and hyperthermia, an increased central-peripheral temperature difference, tachycardia and bradycardia.
Highlights
Worldwide, about 10% of all children are born prematurely, which results in 15 million premature infants each year
We present a low-cost, camera-based monitoring approach which is able to measure vital signs simulated by such a neonatal phantom inside an incubator in order to detect pathology patterns
The results were organized into simulation along with detection of thermal and heart rate (HR)-related pathologies
Summary
About 10% of all children are born prematurely, which results in 15 million premature infants each year. In a neonatal intensive care unit (NICU), the special care especially focuses on keeping the newborns’ body core temperature within a range, which maximizes their chances of survival and is beneficial regarding morbidity and growth [5]. This support is vital, because the thermoregulation of a preterm neonate cannot yet handle large deviations of body temperature, which could lead to a deterioration of the health state due to hypothermia or even death from associated severe infections [6]. Regardless of the core temperature, changes in the central-peripheral temperature difference can indicate abnormal clinical states, such as an unspecific sign of a sepsis [7]
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