Contactless Monitoring for Healthcare Applications

Abstract

Contactless sensors have brought a new way of patient monitoring for healthcare applications. The patient is only required to be in the vicinity of the sensor for health monitoring. Also, there is opportunity for a contactless sensing system to monitor multiple patients simultaneously, which is not possible with wearable contact-based sensors. As a result, a contactless monitoring system would require fewer resources and can be cost effective. In this chapter, different contactless physiological monitoring is discussed. Contactless cardiac and blood related monitoring is discussed including Electrocardiogram (ECG), heart rate, blood pressure etc. Respiratory monitoring is another important area which is included. Monitoring of neurological diseases is reviewed according to different applications. A limited analysis of blood glucose monitoring in diabetes is also provided. Majority of these works involve video camera, motion sensors and Doppler radar as a contactless sensor. In this work, it is intended to analyze the pros and cons of different contactless monitoring and their feasibility to use in various healthcare requirements such as hospitals, nursing homes and homes.