Royal Philips Develops Noncontact Blood Oxygen Measurement

Healthcare technology provider Royal Philips NV has announced that its proprietary camera-based monitoring technology to measure the reflected light off of human foreheads has been used in a study to demonstrate the accurate measurement of absolute oxygen saturation of arterial blood (SpO₂) using contactless measurement.

"Vital signs monitoring is crucial across all types of care settings, but for patient populations with specific conditions, managing their care in a less intrusive way is critical in order to avoid unnecessary distress," said Carla Kriwet, CEO of Philips Patient Care & Monitoring Solutions. "Contactless monitoring solutions will offer clinicians … a way to accurately measure vital signs for patients in a nonobtrusive way and provide them with the data needed to know when to intervene."

The study, published in Anesthesia & Analgesia, showed that SpO₂ can be calibrated across patients just like conventional contact probes, allowing accurate measurements without individual adjustments.

For specific patient populations, including premature infants in the NICU, a contactless alternative would provide potential advantages such as avoiding skin damage in fragile patients and freedom to select a more physiologically central location with a possible faster response rate. With every heartbeat, the cardiovascular pressure wave causes tiny microblushes, or small changes in skin color, in the face. While these changes are not visible to the human eye, Philips' contactless monitoring algorithms can calculate an accurate pulse rate by quantifying these changes.

Royal Philips is a provider of health-care technology for clinical specialties such as anesthesia, cardiology, critical care, home respiratory care, mother and child care, oncology, radiology and sleep apnea.