Heart Rate Detection Using an Event Camera

TL;DR

This paper explores the use of event cameras for noninvasive, continuous heart rate monitoring by detecting blood flow pulsations on the skin surface, demonstrating promising results compared to traditional methods.

Contribution

It introduces a novel application of event cameras for pulse detection, showing feasibility and addressing challenges like flickering and tremors.

Findings

Event cameras can accurately detect heart rate from wrist skin surface.

The method works across different age groups and skin colors.

Challenges include light flickering and natural tremors affecting data quality.

Abstract

Event cameras, also known as neuromorphic cameras, are an emerging technology that offer advantages over traditional shutter and frame-based cameras, including high temporal resolution, low power consumption, and selective data acquisition. In this study, we propose to harnesses the capabilities of event-based cameras to capture subtle changes in the surface of the skin caused by the pulsatile flow of blood in the wrist region. We investigate whether an event camera could be used for continuous noninvasive monitoring of heart rate (HR). Event camera video data from 25 participants, comprising varying age groups and skin colours, was collected and analysed. Ground-truth HR measurements obtained using conventional methods were used to evaluate of the accuracy of automatic detection of HR from event camera data. Our experimental results and comparison to the performance of other non-contact HR measurement methods demonstrate the feasibility of using event cameras for pulse detection. We also acknowledge the challenges and limitations of our method, such as light-induced flickering and the sub-conscious but naturally-occurring tremors of an individual during data capture.