Non-contact, real-time monitoring of heart rate with a Webcam with application during water-bed massage

摘要

Techniques for measuring physiological signals are gathering a lot of attention in recent years. In many cases, the techniques require to make direct contact between the physiological signal sensors with the subject's skin. Several studies were proposed to measure heart rate (HR) with standard web cameras under the condition that the subject is keeping the quiescent state. In this paper, we propose a new technique for measuring HR which allows the subject head movements during water-bed massage. For comparison purpose, HR was measured simultaneously using an electrocardiography (ECG) device during all sessions of the experiment. The result shows that our proposed technique is able to improve the accuracy of HR measurement and reduce the processing time to nearly one-third of the existing method. Our approach could be beneficial for applications that require real-time HR monitoring during subject's head is moving.