Camera-based Heart Rate Monitoring



AbstractIn recent years, measuring the heart rate using only a cheap camera has become popular. In this thesis we have implemented and tested different non-contact methods for measuring the heart rate. Face detection was used in all of these and ICA for separation of the observed signals into a heart rate signal was used in some. Videos of test subjects with a duration of 60 seconds were recorded. The methods were applied to these and were compared with a reference heart rate monitor.

The results were comparable or better than similar studies, and we achieved high correlation and small errors compared with the reference heart rate. We also found that the choice of colour space did not significantly change the results.

We have extended this method to calculate maps of how visible the heart rate is in different parts of the face, and used these to obtain better heart rate signals. Using these improved signals we have calculated the time delay of the heart rate between the hand and the face. We have compared this time difference with the systolic blood pressure, but we were unable to conclude whether there is a significant correlation, due to a too small sample size.
TypeBachelor thesis [Academic thesis]
Year2014
PublisherTechnical University of Denmark, Department of Applied Mathematics and Computer Science
AddressRichard Petersens Plads, Building 324, DK-2800 Kgs. Lyngby, Denmark, compute@compute.dtu.dk
SeriesDTU Compute B.Sc.-2014
NoteDTU supervisor: Rasmus Larsen, rlar@dtu.dk, DTU Compute, and Knut Conradsen, knco@dtu.dk, DTU Compute
Electronic version(s)[pdf]
Publication linkhttp://www.compute.dtu.dk/English.aspx
BibTeX data [bibtex]
IMM Group(s)Image Analysis & Computer Graphics