IP Library Granted Patent US 10,709,354
Granted Patent B2
US 10,709,354 · App. 15/697,220 · Granted Jul 14, 2020

Generating a breathing alert

Inventors: Jacob Gunther (North Logan, UT); Nathan E. Ruben (Smithfield, UT)
A61B5/0873A61B5/113A61B5/4806A61B5/746A61M16/0051A61M16/026A61B5/0816A61M2205/3375A61M2205/502A61M2205/584A61M2230/63
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Quick Facts
Patent No.
US 10,709,354
App. No.
15/697,220
Granted
Jul 14, 2020
Kind
B2
Abstract

For generating a breathing alert, a method captures a video stream of a subject. The method further generates a vector time series that includes a vector for each image frame of the video stream. The method estimates of breathing signal from the vector time series. The method further determines one of large-scale motion and a breathing event of the subject based on the breathing signal. The method generates an alert if no breathing event is identified and no large-scale motion of the subject is identified within an event time interval.

Claims (73)

1. A method comprising:

receiving, by a processing apparatus, a video stream of a subject;

generating, by the processing apparatus, a vector time series that comprises a vector for each image frame of the video stream;

estimating, by the processing apparatus, a breathing signal from the vector time series;

determining, by the processing apparatus, one of a large-scale motion and a breathing event of the subject based on the breathing signal; and

generating, by the processing apparatus, an alert if both no breathing event is identified and no large-scale motion of the subject is identified within an event time interval,

wherein estimating the breathing signal comprises:

decomposing a matrix X of a windowed video subsequence of the video stream into a sparse matrix S representing moving objects and a low rank matrix L representing non-moving objects;

reconstructing a video stream of the moving objects from the sparse matrix S, wherein each pixel of the reconstructed video stream of the moving objects comprises one of a scalar time series and a vector time series; and

measuring breathing events in the reconstructed video stream.

2. The method of claim 1 , further comprising capturing the video stream using a bandpass filter in the range of 0.8-2.5 micrometers and with a Charge Coupled Device (CCD) tuned to 1.5 micrometers.

3. The method of claim 1 , wherein generating the vector time series comprises dividing each image frame into regions and summing pixel values in each region as a pixel sum.

4. The method of claim 1 , wherein generating the vector time series comprises dividing each image frame into regions and removing a signal mean in each region.

5. The method of claim 1 , the method further comprising:

generating a breathing report based at least in part on breathing events determined based on the breathing signal, wherein the breathing report comprises one or more of: a breath rate, a maximum inter-breath interval, a minimum inter-breath interval, inter-breath interval statistics, an inter-breath interval histogram, and apnea event data; and

generating a motion report based at least in part on large-scale motions determined based on the breathing signal, wherein the motion report comprises one or more of: a motion frequency, a motion magnitude, a motion duration, a sleep length, a sleep quality, and sleep intervals.

6. The method of claim 1 , wherein estimating the breathing signal comprises applying an adaptive subspace algorithm to each vector of the vector time series.

7. The method of claim 1 , wherein estimating the breathing signal further comprises:

defining a cursor t that indexes the image frames I of the video stream;

defining a window length N;

extracting the windowed video subsequence of the video stream comprising N image frames I(t−N+1), I(t−N+2), I(t−N+3), . . . , I(t−2), I(t−1), I(t); and

organizing the windowed video subsequence into the matrix, X, having M rows and N columns, where M is the product of a height, a width and a number of channels in the image frames of the video stream.

8. The method of claim 7 , the method further comprising:

calculating a normalized auto-correlation for each pixel of the reconstructed video stream of moving objects; and

identifying a breathing event in response to an auto-correlation peak for a given pixel of the reconstructed video stream of moving objects persisting over a specified number of consecutive time periods.

9. The method of claim 7 , wherein the matrix X is decomposed by iteratively approximating a decomposition algorithm by:

initializing S=0;

calculating L=mean (X−S), wherein X=L+S+N and N is additive noise;

calculating

S{i,j}={X{i,j}−L{i,j }, if . . . X{i,j}−L{i,j}·<T 0,otherwise},

wherein S{i,j} denotes the element of the matrix S on the ith row and the jth column, and T is a sparsity threshold; and

repeating the calculating steps until a stopping condition is satisfied.

10. The method of claim 1 , the method further comprises:

encoding a breath rate from a plurality of breathing events as a heat map;

overlaying the heat map on the video stream for display to a user.

11. The method of claim 1 , the method further comprises:

encoding large-scale motion of a subject as a heat map;

overlaying the heat map on the video stream for display to a user.

12. An apparatus comprising:

one or more memory devices; and

one or more processing devices, in communication with the one or more memory devices, and configured to:

receive a video stream of a subject via a camera;

generate a vector time series that comprises a vector for each image frame of the video stream, estimate a breathing signal from the vector time series, and determine one of a large-scale motion and a breathing event of the subject based on the breathing signal; and

generate an alert if both no breathing event is identified and no large-scale motion of the subject is identified within an event time interval,

wherein estimating the breathing signal comprises:

decomposing a matrix X of a windowed video subsequence of the video stream into a sparse matrix S representing moving objects and a low rank matrix L representing non-moving objects;

reconstructing a video stream of the moving objects from the sparse matrix S, wherein each pixel of the reconstructed video stream of the moving objects comprises one of a scalar time series and a vector time series; and

measuring breathing events in the reconstructed video stream.

13. The apparatus of claim 12 , further comprising a camera that comprises a bandpass filter in the range of 0.8-2.5 micrometers and a Charge Coupled Device (CCD) tuned to 1.5 micrometers.

14. The apparatus of claim 12 , wherein generating the vector time series comprises dividing each image frame into regions and summing pixel values in each region as a pixel sum.

15. The apparatus of claim 12 , wherein generating the vector time series comprises dividing each image frame into regions and removing a signal mean in each region.

16. The apparatus of claim 12 , wherein the one or more processing devices are further configured to:

generate a breathing report based at least in part on breathing events determined based on the breathing signal, wherein the breathing report comprises one or more of: a breath rate, a maximum inter-breath interval, a minimum inter-breath interval, inter-breath interval statistics, an inter-breath interval histogram, and apnea event data; and

generate a motion report based at least in part on large-scale motions determined based on the breathing signal, wherein the motion report comprises one or more of: a motion frequency, a motion magnitude, a motion duration, a sleep length, a sleep quality, and sleep intervals.

17. The apparatus of claim 12 , wherein estimating the breathing signal comprises applying an adaptive subspace algorithm to each vector of the vector time series.

18. The apparatus of claim 12 , wherein estimating the breathing signal further comprises:

defining a cursor t that indexes the image frames I of the video stream;

defining a window length N;

extracting the windowed video subsequence of the video stream comprising N image frames I(t−N+1), I(t−N+2), I(t−N+3), . . . , I(t−2), I(t−1), I(t);

organizing the windowed video subsequence into the matrix, X, having M rows and N columns, where M is the product of a height, a width and a number of channels in the image frames of the video stream.

19. The apparatus of claim 17 , wherein the one or more processing devices are further configured to:

calculate a normalized auto-correlation for each pixel of the reconstructed video stream of moving objects; and

identify a breathing event in response to an auto-correlation peak for a given pixel of the reconstructed video stream of moving objects persisting over a specified number of consecutive time periods.

20. The apparatus of claim 17 , wherein the matrix X is decomposed by iteratively approximating a decomposition algorithm by:

initializing S=0;

calculating L=mean (X−S), wherein X=L+S+N and N is additive noise;

calculating

S{i,j}={X{i,j}−L{i,j }, if . . . X{i,j}−L{i,j}·<T 0,otherwise},

wherein S{i,j} denotes the element of the matrix S on the ith row and the jth column, and T is a sparsity threshold; and

repeating the calculating steps until a stopping condition is satisfied.

21. The method of claim 1 , further comprising:

calculating breathing data comprising one or more of: a breath rate, a maximum inter-breath interval, a minimum inter-breath interval, inter-breath interval statistics, and an inter-breath interval histogram; and

identifying a sleep apnea event based on the breathing data.

Assignments (2)
ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNOR'S INTEREST Recorded May 19, 2026
From: PHOTORITHM, INC.
To: NANOBEBE LTD
Reel/Frame 074694/0647 →
SECURITY INTEREST Recorded May 22, 2023
From: PHOTORITHM INC.
To: ARBEL FUND 2, LIMITED PARTNERSHIP; ARBEL FUND 2B, LIMITED PARTNERSHIP
Reel/Frame 063722/0759 →
Continuity (2)
Provisional Application 62383769 · Sep 6, 2016
Related Publication 20180064369A1 · Mar 8, 2018