A Tool for Automatic Hammersmith Infant Neurological Examination

Abstract

Hammersmith Infant Neurological Examination (HINE) is a popular method to estimate the neurological development of infants aged less than two years. Using HINE, especially for preterm or premature babies, the risk of neural disorder can be minimized through proper preventive measures. This paper presents the design of a semi-automatic application that can be used as an aid to doctors for efficiently conducting the examinations listed in the Hammersmith chart. The user friendly version of the examination interface provides a platform for quantitative neurological assessment of the infants. It includes various simplified video and image based schemes that are suited to inexperienced staff. It provides an interface to go through the previous records of patients. Ten examinations are enlisted in the Hammersmith chart for neonatal babies. This paper examines a semi-automatic approach for posture estimation examination. For post neonatal infants, a follow-up management interface is designed that can be used to fetch / consult past records of the patients for better diagnosis. The application is currently in operation at Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) of Institute of Post-Graduate Medical Education & Research (IPGME & R) and Seth Sukhlal Karnani Memorial (SSKM) Hospital, Kolkata, India.