Method and apparatus for monitoring of a human or animal subject

Inventors

HUTCHINSON, Nicholas Dunkley • Gibson, Oliver John • Dodds, Peter Richard

Assignees

Oxehealth Ltd

Abstract

A method and apparatus for monitoring a human or animal subject in a room using video imaging of the subject and analysis of the video image to derive an estimate of vital signs such as heart rate or breathing rate. The method includes determination of whether the subject in the images is still or moving, and whether any of the regions from which vital signs are being detected are not on the subject. The subject's movement may be manually or automatically detected, and the determination of whether regions from which vital signs are being detected are not on the subject can be input manually, by displaying the regions to the user in a visually distinguishable manner, or automatically. Vital signs measurements are only displayed if the subject is determined as being still and if there are no regions in the image which are returning vital signs signals but are not determined as being on the subject.

Core Innovation

The invention relates to a video-based monitoring method and system for a human or animal subject in an enclosed room, where a video camera captures a video image of the subject and a video image processing unit analyses the video image to determine one or more vital signs. The vital signs are detected on at least one of the subject and a region excluding the subject, and the system displays a graphical user interface comprising an icon indicative of the monitoring of the subject.

A key feature is that the method determines whether the subject is still. Only after the subject is determined as still, the method determines based on input from the user whether all regions of the video image from which vital signs are detected are on the subject.

This on-subject verification is carried out by displaying the video image of the subject with an indication of where vital signs are being detected and accepting user input indicating whether any detected vital-sign regions are not on the subject. Only if the subject is still and all regions of the video image from which vital signs are detected are on the subject, the method displays the determined vital signs.

Claims Coverage

Two independent claims are provided: one method claim and one system claim. Both independent claims share the same inventive structure, comprising vital-sign detection from video, a determination of whether the subject is still, and a user-input verification that the detected vital-sign regions are on the subject before displaying the determined vital signs.

Across the independent method and system claims, the inventive approach is conditional vital-sign display based on stillness determination and user-validated confirmation that the vital-sign detection regions are on the subject.

Stated Advantages

Documented Applications

No documented applications found