Evaluation of Respiration Rate Using Thermal Imaging in Mobile Conditions

Respiratory rate is very important vital sign that should be measured and documented in many medical situations. The remote measurement of respiration rate can be especially valuable for medical screening purposes (e.g. severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), pandemic influenza, etc.). In this chapter we present a review of many different studies focused on the measurements and estimation of respiration rate using thermal imaging methods. Additionally, we present results of our research focused on the evaluation of different respiration rate estimators for the needs of data processing of image sequences recorded by small, mobile thermal cameras. We used small thermal camera modules in the prototypes of smart glasses for the evaluation of different parameters related to respiration activities. The chapter presents the used methodology and results of the respiration rate analysis, detection of apnea events, description of respiration patterns and other parameters that can be analyzed for respiration waveforms derived from the regions of the nostrils or mouth in thermal video sequences.