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Non-contact high precision pulse-rate monitoring system for moving subjects in different motion states

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Abstract

Remote photoplethysmography (rPPG) enables contact-free monitoring of the pulse rate by using a color camera. The fundamental limitation is that motion artifacts and changes in ambient light conditions greatly affect the accuracy of pulse-rate monitoring. We propose use of a high-speed camera and a motion suppression algorithm with high computational efficiency. This system incorporates a number of major improvements including reproduction of pulse wave details, high-precision pulse-rate monitoring of moving subjects, and excellent scene scalability. A series of quantization methods were used to evaluate the effect of different frame rates and different algorithms in pulse-rate monitoring of moving subjects. The experimental results show that use of 180-fps video and a Plane-Orthogonal-to-Skin (POS) algorithm can produce high-precision pulse-rate monitoring results with mean absolute error can be less than 5 bpm and the relative accuracy reaching 94.5%. Thus, it has significant potential to improve personal health care and intelligent health monitoring.

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Funding

This work is supported by Major Science and Technology Project of Hainan Province, ZDKJ202006.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Biomedical Engineering, Hainan University, Haikou, 570228, Hainan, China

    Qing Zhang, Xingsen Lin, Yuxin Zhang, Qian Liu & Fuhong Cai

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  1. Qing Zhang
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Correspondence to Fuhong Cai.

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This study was approved by the Animal Ethics Committee of Hainan University; informed consent was obtained from each participant. They also have permitted their own images to appear in the manuscript.

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Zhang, Q., Lin, X., Zhang, Y. et al. Non-contact high precision pulse-rate monitoring system for moving subjects in different motion states. Med Biol Eng Comput 61, 2769–2783 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11517-023-02884-1

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