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Noncontact heart rate measurement using a high-sensitivity camera in a low-light environment

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Abstract

We propose a method for the remote estimation of the heart rate and heart rate variability spectrogram by analyzing the hemoglobin concentration obtained from RGB facial videos taken in a low-light environment. The monitoring of emotion has potential in areas such as market research, safety, and health. In particular, methods of analyzing the heart rate obtained from RGB video are expected to be used practically. However, these studies cannot be applied in dark locations where monitoring is necessary, such as an infant’s bedroom, a crime-prone road, and within a car. The proposed method, therefore, uses a highly sensitivity RGB camera capable of capturing videos at low illuminance. As the result, we could measure the heart rate with accuracy exceeding 99% and estimate the heart rate variability spectrogram with high accuracy for low-light environments of 10 lx, which corresponds to brightness levels of the monitoring environments given above.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Graduate School of Advanced Integration Science, Chiba University, Chiba, Japan

    Genki Okada, Ryota Mitsuhashi & Norimichi Tsumura

  2. Research Institute of Electronics, Shizuoka University, Hamamatsu, Japan

    Keiichiro Kagawa, Shoji Kawahito & Norimichi Tsumura

Authors
  1. Genki Okada
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  2. Ryota Mitsuhashi
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  3. Keiichiro Kagawa
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  4. Shoji Kawahito
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  5. Norimichi Tsumura
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Genki Okada.

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Okada, G., Mitsuhashi, R., Kagawa, K. et al. Noncontact heart rate measurement using a high-sensitivity camera in a low-light environment. Artif Life Robotics 24, 6–11 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10015-018-0461-y

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10015-018-0461-y

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