We present a novel non-contact photoplethysmographic (PPG) imaging system based on high-resolution video recordings of ambient reflectance of human bodies that compensates for body motion and takes advantage of skin erythema fluctuations to improve measurement reliability for the purpose of remote heart rate monitoring. A single measurement location for recording the ambient reflectance is automatically identified on an individual, and the motion for the location is determined over time via measurement location tracking. Based on the determined motion information motion-compensated reflectance measurements at different wavelengths for the measurement location can be acquired, thus providing more reliable measurements for the same location on the human over time. The reflectance measurement is used to determine skin erythema fluctuations over time, resulting in the capture of a PPG signal with a high signal-to-noise ratio. To test the efficacy of the proposed system, a set of experiments involving human motion in a front-facing position were performed under natural ambient light. The experimental results demonstrated that skin erythema fluctuations can achieve noticeably improved average accuracy in heart rate measurement when compared to previously proposed non-contact PPG imaging systems.

Date Published: 5 March 2015
PDF: 5 pages
Proc. SPIE 9316, Multimodal Biomedical Imaging X, 93160A (5 March 2015); doi: 10.1117/12.2078397

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 9316:
Multimodal Biomedical Imaging X
Fred S. Azar; Xavier Intes, Editor(s)