Neonatal Infrared Thermography Monitoring

Abstract

For critically ill preterm infants, there is a clinical need for contact-free monitoring technologies, which would eliminate discomfort and potential harm (e.g., necrosis) due to adhesive electrodes, temperature and saturation sensors. Hence, this chapter focuses on non-contact physiological monitoring of infants based on infrared (IR) thermography. This technique has the potential to replace the conventional temperature sensing by detecting radiated thermal energy emitted from the baby’s surface according to black-body radiation principle. This allows the application of a less invasive method giving more detailed information about the thermoregulation status of newborn infants. As an illustrative example, an investigation into thermoregulation physiology during kangaroo care method has been chosen to illustrate the benefit of this method for standardized neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) procedures. Furthermore, this technique may have a large impact on non-contact respiratory monitoring, as it allows quantitative evaluation of the heat transfer processes over nostrils region. Moreover, the ability to detect infrared respiration (IRTR) signature with thermography imaging, will pave the road toward a non-contact breathing monitoring. This in turn will influence the development efforts for wireless and smart incubator solutions.

Review of Biomedical Applications of Contactless Imaging of Neonates using Infrared Thermography and Beyond

“…The core temperature of the human body ranges between 36.5 • C and 37.5 • C [12,20], while the surface temperature is approximately 33 • C [21]. Therefore, the range of human body temperatures that can potentially be recorded by a thermal (infrared) camera is between 33 • C and 40 • C, which is equivalent to a wavelength in the range of several micrometers (µm) [22].…”

Infrared thermography for detailed registration of thermoregulation in premature infants

“…They require a skin temperature within the range of 35.5 ° C to 37.2 ° C and a core temperature of 37 ° C [1,3] . The rise and drop of body tem perature can affect metabolic rate and oxygen demand resulting in inadequate growth and an increased risk of morbidity and mortality [24] .…”

“…To avoid and/or register changes in body temperature of premature infants, it is standard to continuously measure skin or rectal body temperature by cable-bound sensors. Color infrared thermography (IRT) is a method to measure skin temperature distribution of mature [3,8] and premature [1,10,12,16,19,20,25] infants.…”

Hybrid optical imaging technology for long-term remote monitoring of skin perfusion and temperature behavior

“…Figure 4 shows the potential sources of errors depending on the measurement geometry. 22 On one hand, total radiation coming from the measured surface is generally a sum of three separate components. The first is the emitted radiation of the body (which we are interested in), the second is the transmitted radiation from the background through the body, and the third component is the radiation reflected on the object's surface from the environment.…”