DOMILICIARY HEALTH CARE MONITORING SYSTEM USING CHROMATICITY

摘要

A means of detecting the health-related status of an individual using a nonintrusive passive assessment system in their own living environment is required. A system based on the combination of outputs from two sets of optical sensor units and using a generic methodology called chromaticity has been used to assess the feasibility of cost effective monitoring for domiciliary health care. Values derived from the sensor outputs are related to parameters indicating activity and immobility. The activity parameter is obtained from the outputs of three spatially overlapping infra-red detectors and the immobility parameter from the time that an individual remains stationary at selected locations detected by a different optical based unit. The system was calibrated and tested for artifacts via laboratory-based simulations of a living environment in order to interpret data collected from systems at residential care facilities. The test results show that the activity parameter increases with walking time whilst that for immobility decreases. A methodology based upon chromatic processing has been developed for compressing the large amount of data recorded every second over extended periods so that the well-being of an individual may be observed from the pattern of the compressed data.