National Centre for Research and Development has announced the results of call for proposals entitled “Support for dedicated COVID-19 hospitals in combating the spreading of SARS-CoV-2 virus infection and COVID-19 treatment”. The project submitted by the University of Silesia in Katowice, entitled “Verification of the method to prevent the spreading of SARS-CoV-2 virus infection thanks to application of the procedure for contact-free measurement of temperature in individuals entering and exiting from the hospital, taking into consideration the impact of climatic conditions such as: air temperature, humidity, wind speed, on the measurement values”, has been qualified for the funding.
Implementation of the initiative is intended to contribute to the development of an efficient method to help reduce virus transmission by conducting fast, cheap and easily automated medical tests on people. The leader of the project is the University of Silesia in Katowice, and the partner of the project is City Hospital Urban no. 4 in Gliwice, where the new technology connected with preventing the spread of SARS-CoV-2 will be implemented.
Impact of climatic conditions on temperature measurements
The basic challenges which make it particularly difficult to interpret results and conduct measurements during the pandemic, are the climatic conditions in which patients and medical staff are staying immediately before the measurement (e.g. in front of the hospital entrance). The factors such as wind force and air temperature may influence the measurement reading from the corner of one’s eyes, ears or forehead because of a momentary decrease or increase of temperature in these areas.
Therefore, the project takes into consideration climatic parameters, such as wind speed, humidity and air temperature, which is always lower in the morning, which causes a discrepancy between the results and the ones achieved based on the same assumptions several hours later. From the physical point of view, each of these parameters has influence on the heat stream given away by our organism to the environment, so it significantly impacts the surface body temperature.
Goal of the project
Support for medical units and development of the appropriate procedure for contact-free measurement of temperature of the individuals entering and exiting from the hospital is an important aspect in activities intended to prevent the spreading of virus. Diagnostics with the use of infrared cameras is intended to result in setting the so-called isothermal threshold, which facilitates measurement, automates the reading and its interpretation in the context of atmospheric conditions in which the test person stayed prior to the measurement.
The leader of the project is Assoc. Prof. Armand Cholewka, Professor of the University of Silesia from the Faculty of Science and Technology at the University of Silesia, Deputy Deputy Director of the Institute of Biomedical Engineering. The project will receive the funding of PLN 667,200.
The competition results are available on: ranking list of positively evaluated applications (ncbr.gov.pl)
Kamera termowizyjna. Fot. pixabay