Contactless Heart Rate Monitoring Using A Standard RGB Camera

Video photo-plethysmography (VPG) methods have been used over the years to monitor the heart rate. In this work, we report the usage of two different algorithms to extract cardiac signals from the recorded videos. Video recordings on six different subjects have been carried out at two different experimental setup conditions-front view and side view. Tests are also performed at three different Region of Interest (ROI)-forehead, cheek, and the carotid region. Results suggest that the carotid region offers the best performance in terms of accuracy. The accuracy rate remained consistently high on almost all the trials that underwent side view measurements. It is also noteworthy to mention that in many cases, the green channel exhibited much more accurate results than its counterpart sRGB color space.