THERMOGRAPHIC BODY TEMPERATURE MEASUREMENT USING A MEAN-SHIFT TRACKER

In epilepsy research, using a wide range of sensors can help to automatically detect the occurrence of seizures and to understand their underlying mechanisms. One such sensor is a thermographic camera that can measure the surface temperature of the body. This sensor may have an important role in investigating seizures as studies have shown that they can affect the body temperature of a patient. Furthermore, it has also been shown that kainic acid, a drug used to provoke seizures in animals, has an impact on rat body temperature. Consequently, there is a need to continuously measure the evolution of the body temperature of an animal during seizures. In this paper, we present our developed methodology to measure the temperature of a moving rat using a thermographic camera. To accurately measure the body temperature, we propose a methodology using a Mean-Shift tracker. The obtained measures are compared with a ground truth. The method is tested on a 2-hour video, and it is shown that the Mean-Shift tracker achieves an RMS error of approximately 0.1 degrees C.