Remote photoplethysmography (rPPG) is a technique that aims to remotely estimate the heart rate of an individual using an RGB camera. Although several studies use the rPPG methodology, it is usually applied in a laboratory in a controlled environment, where both the camera and the subject are static, and the illumination is ideal for the task. However, applying rPPG in a real-life scenario is much more demanding, since dynamic illumination issues arise. The work presented in this paper introduces a framework to estimate the heart rate of an individual in real-time using an RGB camera in a situation characterized by dynamic illumination. Such situations occur, for example, when either the camera or the subject is moving, and/or the face visibility is limited. The framework uses a face detection program to extract regions of interest on an individual's face. These regions are combined and constitute the input to a convolutional neural network, which is trained to estimate the heart rate in real-time. The method is evaluated on three publicly available datasets, and an in-house dataset specifically collected for the purpose of this study, that includes motions and dynamic illumination. The method shows good performance on all four datasets, outperforming other methods.
Part of ISBN 9798350302493
QC 20231010