Columbia Technology Ventures

Low-cost, continuous fever monitoring system

This technology is an automated, camera-based body temperature monitoring system termed SIFTER that can continuously screen multiple people for fevers in public settings and can be used as an infectious disease surveillance tool.

Unmet Need: Affordable, real-time body temperature detection at scale

Current methods to conduct non-contact body temperature screening include infrared thermometers and thermal cameras. These methods either require people to stand in close vicinity to the device for a few seconds, which interrupts normal traffic flow and increases exposure risk for employees, or are too expensive. Fevers are a common symptom of various infectious disease and their detection has been used as a simple screening method to prevent the spread of COVID-19. However, the inability of current solutions to provide a low-cost and high-throughput solution has prevented large scale adoption and full realization of its potential as an infectious disease surveillance tool.

The Technology: Low-cost, real-time fever screening system for public settings using cameras and advanced algorithms

The system, titled SIFTER, uses RBG and thermal cameras as sensors to continuously screen public settings without intervention. The system uses a cloud server processing pipeline to detect heads, calibrate for distance and orientation, map to thermal models, and classify fevers by predicting body temperature. SIFTER is able to track temperatures up to 3 meters away, and give results in real-time.

This technology has been validated at ColumbiaDoctors Midtown Clinic by screening 4,000 patients.

Applications:

  • Fever screening for public spaces and events (e.g., concerts, hospitals, public transportation, schools)
  • Infectious disease screening system (e.g., Flu, COVID-19)
  • Emerging infectious disease screening system
  • Infectious disease screening system for domesticated animals
  • High-throughput temperature screening for manufacturing and culinary applications

Advantages:

  • Low-cost and high-throughput
  • Automated, real-time detection
  • Integration with normal activities
  • Long range detection

Lead Inventor:

Xiaofan Jiang, Ph.D.

Patent Information:

Patent Pending

Related Publications:

  • [Hou K, Liu Y, Wei P, Yang C, Kang H, Xia S, Spada T, Rundle A, Jiang X. “A Low-Cost In-situ System for Continuous Multi-Person Fever Screening” ACM/IEEE International Conference on IPSN. 2022.] (https://conferences.computer.org/cpsiot/pdfs/IPSN2022-6R1M30NXCSXmbVKUqzz1Of/962400a015/962400a015.pdf)

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