Using Thermal Imaging to Measure Hand Hygiene Quality

TL;DR

This study explores using thermal and RGB cameras to accurately monitor hand hygiene quality by detecting hand coverage of sanitizer, demonstrating high accuracy and potential for systematic compliance monitoring.

Contribution

It introduces a novel thermal imaging system for real-time, non-invasive assessment of hand hygiene quality with promising accuracy metrics.

Findings

Accuracy of 93.5% at 10 seconds post-application

Dice coefficient of 87.1% at 10 seconds

Accuracy remains above 92% at 60 seconds

Abstract

Hand hygiene has long been promoted as the most effective way to prevent the transmission of infection. However, due to the low compliance and quality of hand hygiene reported in previous studies, constant monitoring of healthcare workers' hand hygiene compliance and quality is crucial. In this study, we investigate the feasibility of using a thermal camera together with an RGB camera to detect hand coverage of alcohol-based formulation, thereby monitoring handrub quality. The system yields promising results in terms of accuracy (93.5%) and Dice coefficient (87.1%) when observations take place 10 seconds after performing handrub. In addition, we also examine the system performance change over a 60-second observation period, and the accuracy and Dice coefficient still remain at about 92.4% and 85.7% when observation happens at the 60-second time point. Given these encouraging results, thermal imaging shows its potential feasibility in providing accurate, constant, and systematic hand hygiene quality monitoring.