Video monitoring of oxygen saturation during controlled episodes of acute hypoxia

A method for extracting video photoplethysmographic information from an RGB video stream is tested on data acquired during a porcine model of acute hypoxia. Cardiac pulsatile information was extracted from the acquired signals and processed to determine a continuously reported oxygen saturation (SvidO2). A high degree of correlation was found to exist between the video and a reference from a pulse oximeter. The calculated mean bias and accuracy across all eight desaturation episodes were -0.03% (range: -0.21% to 0.24%) and accuracy 4.90% (range: 3.80% to 6.19%) respectively. The results support the hypothesis that oxygen saturation trending can be evaluated accurately from a video system during acute hypoxia.