Specialized Video and Physiological Data Coding System for Remote Monitoring

Patient monitoring via video and physiological data recording can now be performed outside hospitals. This procedure, usually performed in a prolonged manner, generates a considerable amount of data, which calls for efficient ways for archiving and transmission. In this work, we present a specialized system to code the video and the physiological data recorded from a patient, aiming at a reduced bandwidth requirement compared to the conventional methods. We´ve developed an object-based approach to coding the monitoring video. By applying two change detection methods, we decompose a video frame into three video object planes (VOPs) representing the background, the stationary foreground and the moving foreground. These VOPs are coded at different frame rates, leading to a reduced overall bit rate. For coding the physiological data (using electroencephalogram, i.e. EEG, as an example), we present an effective solution by using a combination of the lifting scheme and the SPIHT algorithm. This approach is featured with a wavelet-quantization algorithm that enables a scalable transmission. The feasibility of this proposed system is demonstrated by our experimental results