A remote, high-throughput temperature monitoring system for COVID-19 screening

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According to existing epidemiological data, COVID-19 exhibits a high degree of population contagiousness, surpassing that of SARS coronavirus. The large scale movement of people across cities and beyond borders increases the risk of epidemic transmission and the difficulty of prevention and control. The control of the spread of COVID-19 poses a severe challenge for public health authorities across the provinces. In available population data, it is reported that the symptom of abnormal body temperature accounted for 77% of the infected individuals at the onset of the illness. The World Health Organization (WHO) and the U.S. Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) listed fever an important clinical feature for the diagnosis of COVID-19. Forehead thermometer guns and thermal imaging camera-based devices are two existing non-contact temperature measurement technologies. However, the deployment of these two technologies are constrained due to either low-throughput and slow response (forehead thermometer guns) or high-cost, low-accuracy and relatively complicated installation (infrared cameras). In this project, we propose to develop a remote, high-accuracy and high-throughput temperature monitoring system based on artificial intelligence (AI) computer vision guided infrared sensing technology, which can measure human body from a distance of 2-5 meters, with a high measurement accuracy (+/-0.1 degree C), and a high-throughput capability (measure up to 8 people simultaneously and within a few seconds). This remote, high-accuracy and high-efficiency temperature monitoring system will be able to quickly identify COVID-19 patients with fever symptom in a crowd population, enabling quick isolation and quarantine of COVID-19 patients from healthy people. It is critically important to deploy this technology in places like hospitals, subways, stations, airports, schools, shopping malls and other densely populated areas and high-traffic venues. This would be very important to contain the spread of COVID-19 and prevent its resurgence when re-opening Canadian communities and economic activities across Canada.