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Real-time heart activity monitoring with optical illusion using a smartphone

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Abstract

In this study, we obtained a pulsatile photoplethysmogram (PPG) signal from a fingertip using the built-in camera of an iPhone 6 s and displayed a real-time heart activity images with holographic projection on a smartphone screen. Our proposed heart activity hologram is simple and can be easily realized with only a smartphone and overhead projector (OHP) film. A square pyramid-shaped OHP film was positioned on a smartphone screen. The actual cardiac cycle on the smartphone screen was projected onto the film while measuring the pulsatile signal from a fingertip placed on the smartphone’s camera. The heart’s beat-to-beat time interval was then recorded. This approach enables observation of one’s own virtual heart activity in real time, rather than seeing a pulsatile signal graphically on a smartphone. To investigate the feasibility of this heart activity monitoring based on holographic projection, we tested it under different conditions in terms of environmental light, smartphone screen light intensity, and film color, and quantified the contrast-to-noise ratio for comparison.

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Acknowledgements

This study was partially supported by a grant from the Korean Health Technology R&D Project, Ministry of Health and Welfare, Republic of Korea (HI12C0110), and partially supported by a Basic Science Research Program through the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) funded by the Ministry of Science, ICT & Future Planning: NRF-2013R1A1A1005775 and NRF-2015M3A9D7067215.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Biomedical Engineering, Wonkwang University School of Medicine, Iksan, South Korea

    Tharoeun Thap, Heewon Chung & Jinseok Lee

  2. Imaging Science based Lung and Bone Disease Research Center, Wonkwang University, Iksan, South Korea

    Changwon Jeong & Jonghyun Ryu

  3. Computer Science and Engineering, Soonchunhyang University, Asan, South Korea

    Yunyoung Nam

  4. Radiology, Wonkwang University School of Medicine, Iksan, South Korea

    Kwon-Ha Yoon

Authors
  1. Tharoeun Thap
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  2. Heewon Chung
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  3. Changwon Jeong
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  4. Jonghyun Ryu
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  5. Yunyoung Nam
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  6. Kwon-Ha Yoon
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  7. Jinseok Lee
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Jinseok Lee.

Electronic supplementary material

Video 1

Heart activity images on a smartphone screen with artificial simple heart image sequence (video file is uploaded on Figshare website: https://dx.doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.3490253) (MP4 14,528 kb)

Video 2

Heart activity images on a smartphone screen with heart’s depolarization and repolarization sequence (video file is uploaded on Figshare website: https://dx.doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.3490253) (MP4 15,647 kb)

Video 3

Heart activity images on a smartphone screen with 3D reconstructed heart image sequence (video file is uploaded on Figshare website: https://dx.doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.3490253) (MP4 19,102 kb)

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Thap, T., Chung, H., Jeong, C. et al. Real-time heart activity monitoring with optical illusion using a smartphone. Multimed Tools Appl 77, 6209–6224 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11042-017-4530-3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11042-017-4530-3

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