The Institute - September 2020 - TI11

Thermal
Cameras'
New Role:
Controlling
COVID-19
Community
Spread

ALEJANDRO KURTZ DE GRINO

hermal-imaging cameras provide a fast, contactless, and reliable method to detect a fever, a
common symptom of COVID-19. Two
IEEE members, one in Spain and the
other in Switzerland, are working on
separate projects that improve the
thermography technology used in
the cameras so they can be employed
at airports, hospitals, factories, office
buildings, restaurants, and stores to
provide fast screenings to help stop
the spread of the virus.
IEEE Member Alejandro Kurtz de
Griñó, a design and research engineer
at software company BCB Computing in
Madrid, is developing software to help
the cameras meet technical standards
required by the health care industry.
The thermal-imaging camera that
IEEE Fellow Touradj Ebrahimi is building also checks for elevated body

temperature, but it also can trace
people's contacts. He also developed
a cryptographic tool to ensure the privacy of people whose temperature is
checked. Ebrahimi is a professor of
multimedia signal processing at École
Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne,
in Switzerland.
NEW SOFTWARE

Thermographic cameras used in health
care must meet certain standards, de
Griñó notes. For example, the screening technology must have a high thermal resolution and a measurement
accuracy of plus or minus 0.5 ºC. Several manufacturers of the cameras are
not following those requirements, he
says, so his company is developing software for them that does.
"It wasn't easy to develop a solution that met the requirements of the

IEEE Member Alejandro Kurtz de Griñó
testing fever screening software in a
Flir camera. The color red indicates
elevated temperature.

technical standard for fever screening
using thermal cameras," de Griñó says.
The software will be tested in thermographic cameras made by Flir Systems, a leading manufacturer of the
cameras. Flir has several models that,
when paired with BCB's TempScan
software, meet the international standards. The cameras have infrared temperature sensors and motorized focus,
which are controlled by the software's
system operator. The temperature sensors detect electromagnetic waves
from the person, and the motorized
focus allows the camera's operator to
zoom in and out.
The software uses GigE Vision and
Genlcam, de Griñó says. The GigE

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https://www.epfl.ch/en/ https://www.epfl.ch/en/ https://www.flir.com/about/about-flir/ https://www.flir.com/about/about-flir/ https://www.bcb.es/docs/pdf/en/EN-BCB366-1-2003.pdf https://www.linkedin.com/in/alejandro-kurtz-de-gri%C3%B1%C3%B3-4b012b44/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/alejandro-kurtz-de-gri%C3%B1%C3%B3-4b012b44/ https://www.bcb.es/ https://people.epfl.ch/touradj.ebrahimi

The Institute - September 2020

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