Range image processing for real time hospital-room monitoring

Abstract

In this paper we describe a robust and movable real-time system, based on range data and 2D image processing, to monitor hospitalrooms and to provide useful information that can be used to give early warnings in case of dangerous situations. The system auto-configures itself in real-time, no initial supervised setup is necessary, so is easy to displace it from room to room, according to the effective hospital needs. Night-and-day operations are granted even in presence of severe occlusions, by exploiting the 3D data given by a Kinect© sensor. High performance is obtained by a hierarchical approach that first detects the rough geometry of the scene. Thereafter, the system detects the other entities, like beds and people. The current implementation has been preliminarily tested at “Le Scotte” polyclinic hospital in Siena, and allows a 24 h coverage of up to three beds by a single Kinect © in a typical room.