Development of a Multi-Functional Remote Health Monitoring System

With the increased concern over contact-transmitted diseases and the rapid growth in the field of telemedicine, it is critical to develop remote diagnostic systems to meet these needs. In this paper, multiple methods of remote vital sign estimation are explored and combined to form a multi-functional remote health monitoring system. Camera-based systems are utilized to estimate patient heart rate, blood pressure, SpO2, and temperature under the assumption of adequate lighting. Similarly, radar-based systems are used as a more robust method to estimate patient heart and respiration rate. These two methods are used simultaneously to capture all of the major vital signs of human subjects. Results show the proposed system can perform with high accuracy in each of its functionalities.

I. Introduction

Remote health monitoring has been the subject of increased interest over recent years due to the COVID-19 pandemic [1]. To achieve this, various types of cameras have been used to research methods to extract the imaging-photoplethysmogram (iPPG) signal to estimate important vital signs such as heart rate, breathing rate, blood oxygen saturation (SpO2), and blood pressure. Thermal cameras have been used to also perform fever detection. Though cameras have a wide range of possible functionality with regards to remote health monitoring, in some cases there are concerns over adequate lighting, skin pigmentation issues, and privacy. To address these issues, radar has been used in the past to estimate the heart and respiration rates of human subjects under any lighting scenario. Studies have been done on the feasibility of using radar and RGB or IR cameras to extract each of these vital signs individually. However, to achieve a complete non-contact vital sign monitoring system, it must be capable of extracting all of these possible vital signs simultaneously.