Contactless COVID-19 Detection System

Contactless Infectious Disease Detection Platform (CID2) integrates several mature sensor technologies such as laser and hyper spectral imaging and using machine learning data fusion to remotely (from a 3-5 feet distance) detect anomalies in pulse, breathing rates, body chills, fever and oxygen saturation levels. Future capabilities include voice anomalies related to respiratory symptoms and blood symptoms. The mobile system with built-in rechargeable battery simplifies installation and deployment.

CID2 allows mass-public venues to rapidly (within 15 seconds), safely and cost-effectively conduct primary screening for visitors and employees to regain public trust and increase organizational resiliency against pandemics.

CID2 sensors will be networked to a central AI-based data analytics platform providing customers with effective cluster detection and early warning system for future pandemics to enhance organizational resiliency and protect business continuity. This will allow us to reopen the economy while saving lives!

End-users are public venue operators such as airports; airlines; governments active in passenger screening at airports (e.g. TSA); mass transit operators; maritime (seaports and cruise ships); border crossings; amusement parks; stadiums; concert halls; critical infrastructure sites; high-rise buildings; shopping malls; school and university campuses; nursing homes; hospitals; prisons and courthouses. Every location where volumes of visitors and employees will need to undergo a health screening prior to entering the facility to work and enjoy the facility without being concerned about other COVID-19 symptomatic and asymptomatic visitors and employees (or other pandemics).

Currently there is a critical tension between the urgent need to reopen the economy and allow the free flow of people and commerce in such mass public venues and the urgent need to ensure the health and safety of visitors and employees and mitigate risks from COVID-19 infections as well as future pandemics.

The proposed system allows mass public venue owners and operators to alleviate this critical tension through a cost-effective, scalable, easily deployable (battery-operated) rapid screening, safe (class 1 laser and other approved sensors) and efficient health screening solution that can enhance organizational resiliency against current and future pandemics and help reduce the severe risk to business continuity.

CID2 platform integrates a laser-based optical stethoscope with a Hyper Spectral Imaging sensor to measure respiratory and heart-related sounds, body temperature and blood oxygenation at a distance of up to 5 feet. The system will detect anomalies in parameters correlated with the onset of various (mainly respiratory) infectious diseases. The current application is focused on the early detection of COVID-19-related signs with high sensitivity as follows:

• Respiratory sounds - shortness of breath, cough, and breath rate variability
• Respiratory sound patterns- wheezing, whistling and high frequency sounds (>100Hz)
• Heart rate and HR variability
• Low frequency sounds (<100Hz) such as liquid in lungs and turbulence
• Anomalies in human speech reflecting health issues
• Body vibration reflecting chills
• Low oxygen saturation in blood (even in asymptomatic subjects)
• Body temperature indicating fever

The sensor array contained:

1. Self-Mix Laser Diode - detects back-reflection of eye-safe laser light from skin, which undergoes Doppler shift caused by skin movement. The vibrations are as small as 10nm enabling sensing of miniscule vibrations caused by propagation of sound waves in respiratory system cavities and through soft tissues.
2. The HSI sensor obtains spectral images at or beneath the skin at high frame rates. The information obtained contains oxygen saturation, and temperature.

Currently there is a critical tension between the urgent need to reopen the economy and allow the free flow of people and commerce in such mass public venues and the urgent need to ensure the health and safety of visitors and employees and mitigate risks from COVID-19 infections as well as future pandemics.

The proposed system allows mass public venue owners and operators to alleviate this critical tension through a cost-effective, scalable, easily deployable (battery-operated) rapid screening, safe (class 1 laser and other approved sensors) and efficient health screening solution that can enhance organizational resiliency against current and future pandemics and help reduce the severe risk to business continuity.

There is a critical tension between the urgent need to reopen the economy and allow the free flow of people and commerce in such mass public venues and the urgent need to ensure the health and safety of visitors and employees and mitigate risks from COVID-19 infections as well as future pandemics.

The proposed system allows mass public venue owners and operators to alleviate this critical tension through a cost-effective, scalable, easily deployed, rapid screening, safe and efficient health screening solution that can enhance organizational resiliency against current and future pandemics and help reduce the severe risk to business continuity.

We are developing the Contactless Infectious Disease Detection Platform (CID2) - a sensor-fusion contactless platform integrating a laser-based optical stethoscope with a Hyper Spectral Imaging sensor to rapidly measure respiratory and heart-related sounds, body temperature and blood oxygenation at a distance of 3-5 feet. The system will detect anomalies in parameters correlated with the onset of various (mainly respiratory) infectious diseases. The current application is focused on the early detection of COVID-19-related signs in mass public venues with high sensitivity as follows:

• Respiratory sounds - shortness of breath, cough, and breath rate variability
• Respiratory sound patterns- wheezing, whistling and high frequency sounds (>100Hz)
• Heart rate and HR variability (recently found to be related to COVID-19)
• Low frequency sounds (<100Hz) such as liquid in lungs and turbulence
• Anomalies in human speech reflecting health issues
• Body vibration reflecting chills
• Low oxygen saturation in blood (even in asymptomatic subjects)
• Body temperature indicating fever

Another key innovation is the development of machine learning training methods and algorithms to teach the system to effectively detect early signs of infectious diseases with high probability. The training is based on detecting anomalies and variability in all parameters tested.  A large-scale research study will be conducted gathered and analyzed the collected data. The detection algorithm will be trained and tested for health risk indications—that is, exceptions from the norm in relevant biomarkers will yield a high-risk indication and will require secondary testing (e.g. via a commonly available rapid PCR system).

• Redeploy a mature SMLD sensor (already operational in skin vibration voice recognition and quality assurance sensor) for detection of skin vibration and in-body sounds and integration with HSI sensor for skin and subdermal imaging Initially, a portable setup is built for collecting data of  human subjects. This setup will have a set of sensors to record in parallel a set of targets on each subject (face, throat, chest, neck). Various sensor configurations will reflect the type of measurement performed (small sound vibrations or large breathing movements).
• System architecture: sensor fusion and software development. This is an engineering challenge to develop controller and software providing a highly efficient User Interface for recording subjects rapidly, selecting the correct sensors to participate in each recording, and storing the data in a well-organized database including raw and processed data and test subject meta-data. The data will not include any personal identifiable information.
• Database and algorithm development: Algorithms will be developed to convert the raw data of vital signs and ensure that the algorithms identify biomarkers correctly and provide reliable indications when the norm is exceeded.
• Large scale data collection and system training and testing: Deploy a number of systems in mass public venues and collect large data set in an unsupervised manner. The systems are connected to a secure cloud-based database. Sensor data is used for training a machine-learning algorithm for detection of anomalies per generally accepted medical threshold values generated from a dataset of healthy people.

We are redeploying a mature SMLD sensor (already operational in skin vibration voice recognition and quality assurance sensor) for detection of skin vibration and in-body sounds and integration with HSI sensor for skin and subdermal imaging.

Sensor integration and data fusion is an established approach to provide a broad and flexible detection platform of not only COVID-19 symptoms but also future infectious disease types.

It's being developed but this will serve thousands and even millions of visitors and employees in mass public venues.

Our customers and end-users will be public venue operators and owners such as airports; airlines; government organizations that are active in passenger and employee screening at airports (e.g. CBP, TSA); mass transit; bus, train and rail operators; maritime (seaports and cruise ships); land border crossings; amusement parks; stadiums; concert halls; critical infrastructure sites; high-rise buildings; shopping malls; preK-12 school and university campuses; nursing homes; hospitals; prisons, jails and courthouses; and other mass public venues. Essentially every location where mass volumes of visitors and employees will need to undergo a health screening prior to entering the facility to be able to work and enjoy the facility without being concerned about other symptomatic and asymptomatic visitors and employees that may potentially be infected by COVID-19 (or other future pandemics).

Currently there is a critical tension between the urgent need to reopen the economy and allow the free flow of people and commerce in such mass public venues and the urgent need to ensure the health and safety of visitors and employees and mitigate risks from COVID-19 infections as well as future pandemics.

The proposed system allows mass public venue owners and operators to alleviate this critical tension through a cost-effective, scalable, easily deployable (battery-operated) rapid screening, safe (class 1 laser and other approved sensors) and efficient health screening solution that can enhance organizational resiliency against current and future pandemics and help reduce the severe risk to business continuity.

There is no regulatory framework mandating the use of such systems for public venues. It is only a matter of time until thermal cameras being deployed to such venues will "miss" an asymptomatic COVID-19 patient (without fever) and then need for such a sensor fusion system will rise dramatically.

We need to funding to rapidly develop the proptotype.

Lobby relevant Government agencies to modify the regulatory framework (e.g. CDC, DHS) and raise funding from private and institutional investors as well as pursue Government funding opportunties.

Sales of units, maintenance and data services