As the Covid-19 pandemic drags on, we
continue to struggle with how to
live with the virus.
One of the biggest
challenges has been detection.
The fastest test can return results in
about 15 minutes, but in some
cases it can take up to a week.
And some parts of the U.S.
still lack the
necessary testing capacity.
I don't think there is a
perfect screening mechanism to doing it
unless you're actually testing for the
virus at these points of
entry, which we do not currently as
a nation have a resources to do.
As stores, restaurants and offices start
to reopen, they have turned
to infrared technology to help identify
one of the viruses primary
symptoms. Having a fever is definitely a
red flag that you have it.
Thermal cameras are nothing new.
They actually were used in a
similar manner during the outbreaks of
SARS, MERS and H1N1.
Previous outbreaks impacted Asia-Pacific
and so they gravitated
towards thermal
imaging technologies.
Because the reach of Covid-19 was
global, now we're seeing adoption
in other parts of the globe.
For essential companies and workers
who continue to operate during
the pandemic, i nfrared cameras have
been one line of defense in
keeping people safe. Imagine
you're a mask factory.
You're going to get
a camera in there.
They've got to
protect their people.
We have to protect our people.
We have cameras in our own factory.
We have to can continue to consider
what it means to die from this
virus. But we also have to have
a conversation about how are we going
to live with it? And we
have to figure that out.
Demand for infrared technology is
at an all time high.
The infrared camera market is expected
to grow to ten billion dollars
by 2026, up from
six billion in 2019.
We believe in thermal camera technology
as a frontline screening tool
and the key role they can play in
helping us all get back to whatever
new normal we're headed towards.
Infrared is part of
the electromagnetic spectrum.
Falling within the 700 nanometer
to one millimeter range.
This sits just outside
the visible spectrum.
So we can't see it, but we
are able to detect it as heat.
More than half of the total energy
from the sun reaches Earth in the
form of infrared and all living
things emit varying degrees of
infrared radiation. Pretty much everything
is giving off a heat
signature, anything above
absolute zero.
The body cools itself down by
emitting this heat light, and that's
called long wave
infrared radiation.
While current demand is being
driven by contactless thermometers and
temperature screening devices, infrared
technology has many
applications. Aside from allowing you
to use your television remote,
infrared is prominent
in industrial settings.
You're looking for hotspots that might
indicate fatigue or wear and
mechanical or
electromechanical applications.
It's also popular with the military,
firefighters, search and rescue a
nd in astronomy. We can actually
calibrate cameras up to 3000 C,
which is almost 6000 degrees Fahrenheit
to measure the temperature of
NASA's latest nuclear
electric engine.
FLIR's thermal cameras used in
the military and government spaces
where it's used to create situational
awareness, you can see with
infrared at night or day.
Infrared scanners were widely used to try
and slow the spread of SARS
in China in the early 2000s and
curb the Ebola outbreak in West
Africa a decade later.
If you talk literally to the people
in South Africa, in Nigeria and in
Sierra Leone and Liberia, they credit
the cameras and the thermal
imaging systems that we put in
the airports there from keeping the
virus contained.
While it's a useful tool.
Medical professionals still generally rely
on traditional means to
take a patient's temperature.
When it comes down to, I really
need to know your temperature to make
important decisions, I have to get
what's called a core temperature.
Which those are
the uncomfortable temperatures.
Right. So that would be the ones
that have to go inserted into your
body s omehow. The advantage
of contactless thermometers is its
ability to provide a temperature estimate
quickly a nd from a
distance. We can measure a very
accurate temperature from five feet
away, six feet away,
even 15 feet away.
The biggest advantage of this is that
it's really fast, it's a 2D
image of temperature that can not
be done with any other technology.
Contactless thermometers measure the surface
temperature of our skin.
The best region to scan
is around the eyes.
We know that the best correlation
to core body temperature is really
the tear duct and so when we
focus our measurement for that area,
we're able to get pretty
accurate correlation to core body
temperature. With the inability to
identify coronavirus outside a
test febrile screening's have become one
of the only methods to
quickly spot those who may be
exhibiting symptoms of the virus.
When you run a fever, your blood
vessels dilate and you give off more
energy. If you're really
warm, it's obvious.
I mean, you stick out
like a sore thumb.
Thermal cameras are already
widespread in Asia.
China has been using them to help
since the early days of the
Covid-19 pandemic. If you go
to China, they're everywhere.
And there's lots of Asian countries
where the cameras are mounted all
over the airports. We saw a
spike in demand in the Asia-Pacific
region in early Q1.
So January, February timeframe.
The U.S. has been slow to adopt
the technology, but that is quickly
changing. In July, Hawaii added
infrared cameras to its airports.
LAX and JFK are testing thermal
cameras, and Canada has already
mandated temperature checks
in airports.
There's a camera at
Payne Airport in Seattle.
We installed three cameras
at Love Field.
We have two cameras
at Southwest Airlines headquarters.
The TSA is doing testing with
multiple systems out there to actually
look at deploying this.
Companies like Amazon have placed
big orders for thermal cameras.
It bought $10 million worth from
a Chinese firm that's actually on
the U.S. blacklist.
Ford Motor Company deployed more
than 380 infrared thermal scanners
to its facilities.
Vodafone is deploying cameras made
by surveillance tech company
Digital Barriers.
They also will be used by the
Venetian in Las Vegas, the PGA Golf
Tour and the Baltimore Ravens training
facility, to name a few.
What once was a small, niche
industry has suddenly been overwhelmed
with demand. In places like China,
prices for these devices has
spiked three to five times.
One of the largest thermal
device manufacturers is FLIR Systems.
FLIR makes cameras all the way from
a very low cost, a couple of
hundred dollars that plugs into a mobile
device all the way up to
really expensive solutions that might mount to
an aircraft or be in a
military use. China's largest infrared
tech company, Wuhan Guide
Infrared Co., has been working around
the clock in the epicenter of
the pandemic. It typically only sells
about 100 devices a year, but
has halted production of everything
but temperature scanners to keep
up. Texas based
Infrared Cameras Inc.
is another infrared
device manufacturer.
Our focus is on trying to develop
systems and get the price of the
systems down to where we can
build something that's really great and
really accurate. ICI has provided
cameras for companies like Amazon,
Southwest and FedEx.
If you're like FedEx in Memphis
and you're moving 10,000 people in
there on a night shift through 10
doors, you're going to stand a
system up at every door to measure
those thousand people as they come
through each door. It also has been
setting them up at schools as
students begin to return.
But the accuracy of contactless
thermometers has been called into
question. These devices measure the
skin surface temperature and are
susceptible to inaccurate readings.
Environmental factors can play a part
in skewing your reading, as
well as user error.
It always gives me
a fairly low temperature.
And this is me walking across a
hot parking lot in North Carolina
before I get my temperature done.
The forehead's very susceptible
to environmental impact.
So if I'm outdoors and I come inside,
maybe I was even wearing a hat,
I might have a hot forehead and
it gives you a false positive.
The effectiveness depends
on the device.
Single point systems and those scanning
large crowds are not as
accurate. ICI says its devices are
accurate within a tenth of a
degree. There's a lot of systems that
are being sold out there that
are single point systems.
Not all of these devices are great.
Systems that are trying to look out
into a crowd of people at varying
focus's and distances and maybe looking
at forehead's that are less
accurate. And we really haven't seen
data that shows that they work
effectively as a
frontline screening tool.
But not all contactless
thermometers are created equal.
There's really a lack of education
about the equipment that people are
buying out there. The market is
flooded with low cost systems that
have no FDA clearance that are
pouring in here from China.
Non-contact temperature devices used in
medical environments had to
meet FDA certifications.
There's only a handful of companies
in the United States that actually
make infrared medical devices.
Well, now it's a huge market.
But in April, the administration
said it wouldn't block products
anymore to increase availability.
All these people, people with
zero experience in manufacturing any
kind of infrared device, they're
buying sensors that are putting
stuff together. There's pressure federally
to get more systems out
there. On the other hand, now we
need to make sure that people work
in compliance with all this stuff.
So it's a very
precarious and difficult situation.
Perhaps the biggest issue with thermal
imaging as a screening tool is
the variation in symptoms.
Not everyone with Covid-19 exhibits of
fever and some don't have any
symptoms at all. Twenty five to forty
five percent of the people who
I have a positive covid test
in the emergency room were asymptomatic
entirely. But experts agree
it's better than nothing.
It's probably going to
miss some people.
But on the other hand, again, as
a clinician, if it is picking up
people going to work or going
into places with fevers who otherwise
would not have been picked up,
it probably has some utility.
You don't want false positives, but
you certainly don't want false
negatives. False negatives means
you're letting someone that's
febrile or that has a
fever into the facility.
There are also privacy issues.
Civil liberty advocates are concerned
about the influx of cameras
that will be popping up.
FLIR's elevated skin temperature solutions
don't record or save
any personalized data.
Infrared is not only
for detecting fevers.
It could actually help in
the fight against the virus.
Researchers have been studying how
radiation from red and
near-infrared light can
affect the body.
In the early 2000s, we published
a paper and showed that near-infrared
and red light combined actually
accelerated the healing process of
diabetic ulcers that did not respond
to any other form of treatment.
Near-infrared and red light have been
approved for the treatment of
arthritis. Researchers in Brazil are
investigating the effects of
this light in helping
heal respiratory infections.
Laboratory rats with lung fibrosis
or chronic obstructive lung
disease, similar to what you
find in patients with Covid-19.
That when their lungs are irradiated
through the skin with red and
near-infrared light, particularly near-infrared
light, the symptoms
are reduced significantly and
they actually go away.
While still in early stages, t his
could prove to be a potentially
life saving treatment
for covid-19 patients.
We need to invest in the
research to really demonstrate in
patient-care situations.
So we are looking at a
five to 10 year horizon.
Other applications of infrared include
things like clothing that could
control the amount of infrared radiation
insulated or released by the
garment. I call it smart textile
that can change the radiative heat
transfer property on demand.
And that can be coupled to, say,
your smartphone and you can press a
button and that will change your
textile from heating to cooling mode
and vice-versa. While the applications
are still being figured out,
experts agree that like with other
deadly diseases in the past,
infrared can be part
of the solution.
The world did a phenomenal
job of containing Ebola.
That could happen again.
Look at the lives and the jobs and
the impact to the economy and the
deaths of loved ones.
Let's put systems out there that can
catch this stuff early and take
the infected people and separate
them from the herd.
When there's an outbreak like this,
it needs to be contained.
