Fig. 1 An infrared (IR) camera is a potential tool for detecting fever and widely used for mass screening. However, environmental factors, such as air conditioning, may alter the monitoring of facial skin temperature by infrared camera. Non-contact Measurement of Respiratory and Heart Rates Using a CMOS Camera-equipped Infrared Camera for Prompt Infection Screening at Airport Quarantine Stations Yosuke Nakayama, Guanghao Sun, Student Member, IEEE, Shigeto Abe, Takemi Matsui Graduate School of System Design Tokyo Metropolitan University Tokyo, Japan Nakayama-yosuke@ed.tmu.ac.jp Abstract—Severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) was first reported in 2003 and quickly spread around the world. Therefore, many international airport quarantine stations launched fever-based screening to detect infected passengers using infrared (IR) cameras for preventing global pandemics. However, a screening method based on fever alone can be insufficient for detecting infected individuals because many factors, such as antipyretics uptake, can affect it. Our previous studies using compact radar revealed that simultaneous measurement of facial skin temperature and respiratory and heart rates drastically improved the sensitivity of infection screening compared to that achieved by facial skin temperature measurement alone. Using a CMOS camera-equipped IR camera (CMOS-IR camera), which most Japanese International Airports have adopted, we developed an enhanced thermal/RGB image processing method for non-contact measurement of facial skin temperature, and respiratory and heart rates. We conducted the image processing on the thermal/RGB image-fusion mode in real time; we determined the respiratory rate by thermal images of the IR camera and the heart rate by the RGB images of the CMOS camera. Using a CMOS-IR camera, we measured respiratory and heart rates of ten healthy subjects (23 ± 1 years), and compared them with those determined by a contact-type respiratory effort belt and electrocardiograms (ECGs) as references. The respiratory and heart rates obtained from the CMOS-IR camera exhibited strong positive correlations with those derived from the references, a respiratory effort belt: r = 0.99, p < 0.01; ECG: r = 0.96, p < 0.01, whereas the axillary temperature indicated a moderate degree of correlation to facial skin temperature (r = 0.6). Adopting this method into conventional CMOS-IR camera image processing at international airport quarantines will achieve higher infection screening sensitivity. Key words— Thermal image processing; non-contact; infection screening; vital signs I. INTRODUCTION After the outbreak of SARS, many international airports reinforced quarantine screening of infected individuals by using thermography (Fig. 1). This non-contact method was assumed to be essential in preventing and controlling the transmission of infectious diseases at mass gathering places to triage large numbers of people. However, confounding factors, such as the ambient air or impairment by alcohol or antipyretic, can easily influence monitoring of facial skin temperature with thermography [1–6]. A recent study showed that the sensitivity of fever-based screening with thermography was lower than 70.4% at Narita International Airport in Japan [7]. Considering that the screening method has been unchanged for over a decade and that there is a strong need for more accurate quarantine screening, we propose a non-contact system that can monitor infection-induced alternations of respiratory and heart rates, as well as the facial skin temperature monitored in our previous study [8–10]. Adding these two parameters enables this system to achieve a higher accuracy than that with thermography alone [11, 12]. Research supported by Tokyo Metropolitan Government Asian Human Resources Fund and the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science Research Fellowships for Young Scientists (13J05344). Yosuke Nakayama, Guanghao Sun, Takemi Matsui are with the Graduate School of System Design, Tokyo Metropolitan University, 6-6, Asahigaoka, Hino, Tokyo, Japan (phone/fax: +81-42-585-8669) Shigeto Abe is with the Takasaka Clinic, 172-21, Kanesaka, Uchigomiya, Iwaki, Fukushima, Japan. © IEEE 2015. This article is free to access and download, along with rights for full text and data mining, re-use and analysis.