A Single Subject, Feasibility Study of Using a Non-Contact Measurement to "Visualize" Temperature at Body-Seat Interface.

Measuring temperature changes at the body-seat interface has been drawing increased attention from both industrial and scientific fields, due to the increasingly sedentary nature from daily leisure activity to routine work. Although contact measurement is considered the gold standard, it can affect the local micro-environment and the perception of sitting comfort. A non-contact temperature measurement system was developed to determine the interface temperature using data gathered unobtrusively and continuously from an infrared sensor (IRs). System performance was evaluated regarding linearity, hysteresis, reliability and accuracy. Then a healthy participant sat for an hour on low/intermediate density foams with thickness varying from 0.5−8 cm while body-seat interface temperature was measured simultaneously using a temperature sensor (contact) and an IRs (non-contact). IRs data were filtered with empirical mode decomposition and fractal scaling indices before a data-driven artificial neural network was utilized to estimate the contact surface temperature. A strong correlation existed between non-contact and contact temperature measurement (ρ > 0.85) and the estimation results showed a low root mean square error (RMSE) (<0.07 for low density foam and <0.16 for intermediate density foam) and high Nash-Sutcliff efficiency (NSE) values (≈1 for both types of foam materials).