Demo: RhythmEdge: Enabling Contactless Heart Rate Estimation on the Edge

TL;DR

RhythmEdge is a portable, contactless heart rate monitoring system using deep learning and remote photoplethysmography, designed for real-time use on low-cost edge devices in various environments.

Contribution

The paper introduces RhythmEdge, a novel low-cost, contactless HR monitoring system that operates efficiently on resource-constrained edge platforms using facial video analysis.

Findings

Successfully deployed on NVIDIA Jetson Nano, Google Coral, Raspberry Pi

Achieved real-time HR estimation with low latency and power consumption

Demonstrated stability and feasibility across different cameras and environments

Abstract

In this demo paper, we design and prototype RhythmEdge, a low-cost, deep-learning-based contact-less system for regular HR monitoring applications. RhythmEdge benefits over existing approaches by facilitating contact-less nature, real-time/offline operation, inexpensive and available sensing components, and computing devices. Our RhythmEdge system is portable and easily deployable for reliable HR estimation in moderately controlled indoor or outdoor environments. RhythmEdge measures HR via detecting changes in blood volume from facial videos (Remote Photoplethysmography; rPPG) and provides instant assessment using off-the-shelf commercially available resource-constrained edge platforms and video cameras. We demonstrate the scalability, flexibility, and compatibility of the RhythmEdge by deploying it on three resource-constrained platforms of differing architectures (NVIDIA Jetson Nano, Google Coral Development Board, Raspberry Pi) and three heterogeneous cameras of differing sensitivity, resolution, properties (web camera, action camera, and DSLR). RhythmEdge further stores longitudinal cardiovascular information and provides instant notification to the users. We thoroughly test the prototype stability, latency, and feasibility for three edge computing platforms by profiling their runtime, memory, and power usage.