Image Processing for Nearest-Person Infection Risk Assessment
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Solution Overview
Problem
It is difficult to understand the likelihood of contracting an infectious disease at a target location, which is crucial for reducing the risk of disease transmission.
Innovation Solution
An image processing apparatus computes the distance between individuals in an image and generates infection risk information using this distance to assess the risk of contracting an infectious disease or the safety factor of not contracting it in a target region.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Measurement precision
If image processing is performed to compute distances between persons, then infection risk assessment capability is improved, but system complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The system divides the image processing task into distinct modules: person detection module, distance computation module, and risk assessment module. Each module handles a specific aspect of the overall task, making the complex system more manageable and maintainable while achieving accurate infection risk assessment through coordinated operation of these segmented components
Solution Approach 2:
The patent introduces intermediate data structures and processing layers between image input and final risk assessment output. Distance maps and person position data serve as intermediary representations that bridge the gap between raw image data and infection risk metrics, enabling modular processing and reducing overall system complexity
2Measurement precision
If real-time distance computation is performed for all persons in an image, then infection risk information accuracy is improved, but processing time increases
Solution Approach 1:
The system computes distances selectively rather than for all possible person pairs. It focuses on computing distances from each person only to their nearest neighbors, which is sufficient for infection risk assessment without the computational overhead of calculating all pairwise distances, thus reducing processing time while maintaining accuracy
Solution Approach 2:
The patent performs preliminary person detection and localization before distance computation. By pre-identifying all persons and their positions in the image, the system prepares data structures that enable efficient distance calculations in subsequent steps, reducing overall processing time while maintaining accurate risk assessment
Data Source
AI summary
An image processing apparatus (10) includes an image processing unit (110) and a risk information generation unit (120). The image processing unit (110) acquires and processes an image generated by an image capture apparatus (20), that is, an image including a plurality of persons. As an example, the image processing unit (110) sets a person being at least part of the plurality of persons as a reference person and computes a distance (first distance) between the reference person and the closest person to the reference person. By using the first distance, the risk information generation unit (120) generates infection risk information in a target region being an image capture target of the image capture apparatus (20).