Heart Rate Measurement System using Facial Video Processing

Abstract

In recent years, new advanced technologies introduced for providing clinical health care remotely have appeared and have huge advancements experienced in new fields like telemedicine. New techniques for techniques for measuring physiological parameters out of the hospital, as well as monitoring patients automatically, have been developed. One of these parameters is the heart rate, and it is usually used by medical professionals to assist in diagnosis. For measuring heart rate there are different standard techniques available such as Electrocardiogram which is expensive and discomforts. Another commercial device is oximetry sensor that needs attachment to fingertips, is also inconvenient. For this heart rate is one of the simplest and most important cardiovascular parameter which is identified as an independent risk factor. During the cardiac cycle,because of volumetric changes in the facial blood vessels, the path length of the incident ambient light is modified. And the timing of cardiovascular events are indicated because of the subsequent changes in the amount of reflected light. By recording facial image region with a webcam, the RGB color sensors pick up a mixture of the reflected photoplethysmographic(PPG) signal along with other sources of fluctuations in light due to artifacts such as changes in ambient lighting and motion conditions. These observed signals from the red, green and blue color sensors are used for the further process. Applying Signal Separation algorithm techniques on those signals and green band signals are extracted. In this contribution Independent Component Analysis(ICA) algorithm is used for getting accurate results. After extracting green band signals select the Region of Interest(ROI) by using bucketing technique. And finally, obtain Inter Beat Interval(IBI) and calculate heart rate..