Wang C, Jiang W, Yang K, Sarsenbayeva Z, Tag B, Dingler T, Goncalves J, Kostakos V. Use of thermal imaging to measure the quality of hand hygiene.
J Hosp Infect 2023;
139:113-120. [PMID:
37301230 DOI:
10.1016/j.jhin.2023.05.016]
[Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/08/2023] [Revised: 04/18/2023] [Accepted: 05/11/2023] [Indexed: 06/12/2023]
Abstract
OBJECTIVES
Hand hygiene has long been promoted as the most effective way to prevent the transmission of infection. However, due to low compliance and low quality of hand hygiene reported in previous studies, constant monitoring of hand hygiene compliance and quality among healthcare workers is crucial. This study investigated the feasibility of using a thermal camera with an RGB camera to detect hand coverage of alcohol-based formulation, thereby monitoring the quality of hand rubbing.
METHODS
In total, 32 participants were recruited to participate in this study. Participants were required to perform four types of hand rubbing to achieve different coverage of the alcohol-based formulation. After each task, participants' hands were photographed under a thermal camera and an RGB camera, while an ultraviolet (UV) test was used to provide the ground truth of hand coverage of alcohol-based formulation. U-Net was used to segment areas exposed to alcohol-based formulation from thermal images, and system performance was evaluated by comparing differences in coverage between thermal images and UV images in terms of accuracy and Dice coefficient.
RESULTS
This system found promising results in terms of accuracy (93.5%) and Dice coefficient (87.1%) when observations took place 10 s after hand rubbing. At 60 s after hand rubbing, accuracy and Dice coefficient were 92.4% and 85.7%.
CONCLUSIONS
Thermal imaging has potential for accurate, constant and systematic monitoring of the quality of hand hygiene.
Collapse