An SoC-Based System for Real-time Contactless Measurement of Human Vital Signs and Soft Biometrics

Computer vision (CV) plays big role in our current society's life style. The advancement of CV technology brings the capability to sense human vital sign and soft biometric parameters in contactless way. In this work, we design and implement the contactless human vital sign parameters measurement including pulse rate (PR) and respiration rate (RR) and also for assessment of human soft biometric parameters i.e. age, gender, skin color type, and body height. Our designed system is based on system on chip (SoC) device which run both FPGA and hard processor while provides real-time operation and small form factor. Experimental results shows our device performance has mean absolute error (MAE) 2.85 and 1.46 bpm for PR and RR respectively compared to clinical apparatus. While, for soft biometric parameters measurement we got unsatisfied results on age and gender estimation with accuracy of 58% and 74% respectively. However, for skin color type and body height measurement we reach high accuracy with 98 % and 2.28 cm respectively on both parameters

Fit-NES: wearable bracelet for heart rate monitoring

The heart is a vital organ that serves to pump blood to the whole body. A heart rate can be used as a healthy body parameter conditions. Growing evidence suggests that IT-based health records play essential role to drive medical revolution especially on data storage and processing. The heart rate measurement (HRM) process usually involves wearable sensor devices to record patient’s data. This data is recorded to help the doctors to analyze and provide a better diagnose in order to determine the best treatment for the patients. Connecting the sensor system through a wireless network to a cloud server will enable the doctor to monitor remotely. This paper presents fit-NES wearable bracelet, an alternative method for integrating a HR measurement device using optical based pulse sensor and Bluetooth-based communication module. This paper is also present the benchmarking of proposed system with several various commercial HR measurement devices

A Real-Time Contactless Pulse Rate and Motion Status Monitoring System Based on Complexion Tracking

Subject movement and a dark environment will increase the difficulty of image-based contactless pulse rate detection. In this paper, we detected the subject’s motion status based on complexion tracking and proposed a motion index (MI) to filter motion artifacts in order to increase pulse rate measurement accuracy. Additionally, we integrated the near infrared (NIR) LEDs with the adopted sensor and proposed an effective method to measure the pulse rate in a dark environment. To achieve real-time data processing, the proposed framework is constructed on a Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) platform. Next, the instant pulse rate and motion status are transmitted to a smartphone for remote monitoring. The experiment results showed the error of the pulse rate detection to be within −3.44 to +4.53 bpm under sufficient ambient light and −2.96 to + 4.24 bpm for night mode detection, when the moving speed is higher than 14.45 cm/s. These results demonstrate that the proposed method can improve the robustness of image-based contactless pulse rate detection despite subject movement and a dark environment

Remote Assessment of the Cardiovascular Function Using Camera-Based Photoplethysmography

Camera-based photoplethysmography (cbPPG) is a novel measurement technique that allows the continuous monitoring of vital signs by using common video cameras. In the last decade, the technology has attracted a lot of attention as it is easy to set up, operates remotely, and offers new diagnostic opportunities. Despite the growing interest, cbPPG is not completely established yet and is still primarily the object of research. There are a variety of reasons for this lack of development including that reliable and autonomous hardware setups are missing, that robust processing algorithms are needed, that application fields are still limited, and that it is not completely understood which physiological factors impact the captured signal. In this thesis, these issues will be addressed. A new and innovative measuring system for cbPPG was developed. In the course of three large studies conducted in clinical and non-clinical environments, the system’s great flexibility, autonomy, user-friendliness, and integrability could be successfully proven. Furthermore, it was investigated what value optical polarization filtration adds to cbPPG. The results show that a perpendicular filter setting can significantly enhance the signal quality. In addition, the performed analyses were used to draw conclusions about the origin of cbPPG signals: Blood volume changes are most likely the defining element for the signal's modulation. Besides the hardware-related topics, the software topic was addressed. A new method for the selection of regions of interest (ROIs) in cbPPG videos was developed. Choosing valid ROIs is one of the most important steps in the processing chain of cbPPG software. The new method has the advantage of being fully automated, more independent, and universally applicable. Moreover, it suppresses ballistocardiographic artifacts by utilizing a level-set-based approach. The suitability of the ROI selection method was demonstrated on a large and challenging data set. In the last part of the work, a potentially new application field for cbPPG was explored. It was investigated how cbPPG can be used to assess autonomic reactions of the nervous system at the cutaneous vasculature. The results show that changes in the vasomotor tone, i.e. vasodilation and vasoconstriction, reflect in the pulsation strength of cbPPG signals. These characteristics also shed more light on the origin problem. Similar to the polarization analyses, they support the classic blood volume theory. In conclusion, this thesis tackles relevant issues regarding the application of cbPPG. The proposed solutions pave the way for cbPPG to become an established and widely accepted technology