Patient video monitoring systems and methods having detection algorithm recovery from changes in illumination

Inventors

Clark, Matthew Cameron • del Carpio, Derek

Assignees

CareView Communications Inc

Abstract

Various embodiments concern video patient monitoring with detection zones. Various embodiments can comprise a camera, a user interface, and a computing system. The computing system can be configured to perform various steps based on reception of a frame from the camera, including: calculate a background luminance of the frame; monitor for a luminance change of a zone as compared to one or more previous frames, the luminance change indicative of patient motion in the zone; and compare the background luminance to an aggregate background luminance, the aggregate background luminance based on the plurality of frames. If the background luminance changed by more than a predetermined amount, then the aggregate background luminance can be set to the background luminance, luminance information of the previous frames can be disregarded, and motion detection can be disregarded.

Core Innovation

The invention relates to a camera-based patient video monitoring system in a patient area. A computing system obtains a first frame from a camera, determines a value of an optical characteristic of the first frame, and determines an aggregate value of the optical characteristic based on values from a plurality of frames obtained prior to the first frame. Patient motion is detected based on a difference between the value of the optical characteristic of the first frame and the value of the optical characteristic of a second frame.

A predetermined amount gates motion detection decisions. The system determines an amount of a difference between the value of the optical characteristic of the first frame and the aggregate value and, when that amount is greater than or equal to the predetermined amount, disregards the detection of patient motion based on that determination. In related embodiments, the aggregate value is set to the value of the optical characteristic of the first frame when the greater-than-or-equal threshold condition is met.

For subsequent decision-making, the system obtains a third frame and determines a value of the optical characteristic of the third frame. Patient motion is detected based on a difference between the value of the optical characteristic of the third frame and the value of the optical characteristic of the first frame, and the system determines that an amount of a difference between the value of the optical characteristic of the third frame and the aggregate value is less than the predetermined amount. Based on that determination, the system generates an alert with a user interface based on the detection of patient motion and the determination that the amount is less than the predetermined amount.

Claims Coverage

The provided material includes three independent claim sets for the core logic: system, method, and non-transitory computer-readable medium. Across these independent claims, the core inventive structure uses an optical characteristic, an aggregate value from prior frames, a predetermined amount threshold, and conditional disregard and/or aggregate updating to control alerting, with an additional third-frame decision in several independent claims.

The independent claims are grounded in computing an optical characteristic for frames, building an aggregate value from prior frames, and detecting patient motion from differences between frames. They further require comparing a first-frame-to-aggregate difference against a predetermined amount to disregard motion detection, optionally resetting the aggregate value when that threshold is met, and in several embodiments obtaining a third frame and generating a user-interface alert only when the third-frame-to-aggregate difference is less than the predetermined amount.

Stated Advantages

Documented Applications