Fusion method to estimate heart rate from facial videos based on RPPG and RBCG

Abstract

Remote sensing of vital signs has been developed to improve the measurement environment by using a camera without a skin-contact sensor. The camera-based method is based on two concepts, namely color and motion. The color-based method, remote photoplethysmography (RPPG), measures the color variation of the face generated by reflectance of blood, whereas the motion-based method, remote ballistocardiography (RBCG), measures the subtle motion of the head generated by heartbeat. The main challenge of remote sensing is overcoming the noise of illumination variance and motion artifacts. The studies on remote sensing have focused on the blind source separation (BSS) method for RGB colors or motions of multiple facial points to overcome the noise. However, they have still been limited in their real-world applications. This study hypothesized that BSS-based combining of colors and the motions can improve the accuracy and feasibility of remote sensing in daily life. Thus, this study proposed a fusion method to estimate heart rate based on RPPG and RBCG by the BSS methods such as ensemble averaging (EA), principal component analysis (PCA), and independent component analysis (ICA). The proposed method was verified by comparing it with previous RPPG and RBCG from three datasets according to illumination variance and motion artifacts. The three main contributions of this study are as follows: (1) the proposed method based on RPPG and RBCG improved the remote sensing with the benefits of each measurement; (2) the proposed method was demonstrated by comparing it with previous methods; and (3) the proposed method was tested in various measurement conditions for more practical applications.