I-Corps: Non-Contact Remote Breathing Analysis through Visualization of Thermal and CO2 Flow

I-Corps项目的更广泛影响/商业潜力在于为广泛的呼吸和肺部疾病群体提供新的医疗诊断设备、软件和服务。呼吸监测是判断个体健康状况的重要生理指标。由于该项目的遥感优势，该技术有望在诊所护理和家庭长期监测方面取得商业成功，有助于改善健康结果。这个I-Corps项目是基于最近在呼吸活动遥感方面的创新。在临床环境中，传统的呼吸监测系统要求患者佩戴设备，如在胸部周围佩戴松紧带，或使用侵入性口罩或连接到面部的管道，这会导致患者不适，不适合长期监测。现有的遥感技术由于通过胸部运动或利用相关函数来推断呼吸行为的间接性质而不够精确。本项目的系统旨在既使患者感到舒适，又能准确、全面地分析患者的呼吸行为。它采用了一个专门设计的红外成像相机和一个新颖的软件系统，直接捕捉和可视化人类呼出的二氧化碳（CO2）活动在脸前。这种遥感有助于提高患者对长期测量的舒适度，并以非侵入性的方式提取临床有价值的信息。由于它直接从湍流的呼出行为测量呼吸活动，因此它足够准确和全面，可以获得呼吸频率、速度、强度、潮气量和鼻/口分布，这对诊断阻塞性呼吸、睡眠呼吸暂停和各种肺部疾病至关重要。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The broader impact/commercial potential of this I-Corps project is in providing new medical diagnostic devices, software, and services for broad respiratory and pulmonary disease groups. Respiration monitoring is an important physiological measurement taken to determine the health of an individual. Due to the advantages of this project's remote sensing, the technology is expected to have a potential for commercial success for both in-clinic care and a home-based long term monitoring, contributing toward improved health outcomes. This I-Corps project is based on recent innovations in remote sensing for breathing activities. Conventional respiratory monitoring systems in a clinical setting require patients to wear devices, such as elastic bands around the chest or use invasive masks or tubes connected to the face, which cause patient discomfort and are ill-suited for long-term monitoring. Existing remote sensing techniques are not accurate enough due to the indirect nature of inferring breathing behaviors through chest movements or utilizing correlation functions. This project's system aims for both patient comfort and accurate and comprehensive analysis of patient breathing behaviors. It employs a specifically designed IR imaging camera and a novel software system to directly capture and visualize the human exhale carbon dioxide (CO2) activities in front of the face. This remote sensing helps promote patient comfort for a long-term measurement and it extracts clinically valuable information in a non-invasive way. Since it measures the breathing activities directly from the turbulent exhale behavior, it is accurate and comprehensive enough to obtain breathing rate, speed, strength, tidal volume, and nose/mouth distribution which could be crucial for the diagnosis of obstructive breathing, sleep apnea, and various pulmonary diseases.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.