Application of image analysis system using house dust mite: Evaluation of the effect of chemicals and/or hydrothermal influence on mite control and VOC emissions from building material

Modern buildings in Japan, which are designed to be more air-tight and with better thermal insulationd, often lack sufficient ventilation, resulting in higher humidity and increased condensation indoors. This type of environment fosters proliferation of mites, growth of fungi, and accumulation of house dust causing many residents of such building to suffer from allergies. The authors have previously developed a system capable of evaluating the activity of mites by applying image processing technology, with the objective of controlling this major indoor causes of allergies. This mite image-processing system obtains a correlation between the analysis of mite image data and their activity, and thereby enables quantitative evaluation of their activity. The authors have also reported on the choice of suitable chemical products for mite inactivation and an evaluation of the habitability of the indoor environment to mites using this system. In this paper, we report on improvements to the system that enable not only evaluation of the effects of chemical products on mite proliferation, but also application of the same system to evaluating the quantity of VOCs emitted by building materials.