IR night vision video-based estimation of heart and respiration rates

With the aging of the population, comes increased incidence of chronic diseases affecting the cardiac and respiratory systems. Monitoring of these chronic conditions at home via family members or in institutions via healthcare providers is usually adequate during the day. Non-intrusive video-based monitoring approaches have been proposed using optical cameras whose performance significantly deteriorates in low light conditions. This paper proposed the use of infrared night vision cameras to monitor the heart and respiration rates in low light conditions and in complete darkness. An infrared camera in conjunction with video magnification method is used to capture and analyze the video of subjects in dark conditions. To validate the extracted heart rate, a finger photoplethysmograph (PPG) device that can display the real-time heart rate was used. To validate the respiration rate a BioHarness chest strap was used. The proposed framework was tested on different sizes of regions of interest (ROIs) and different distances between the subject and the camera. A post-processing procedure was applied on the video magnification signal to reduce noise. To characterize and rule out artifacts, an experiment on inanimate objects was also conducted. Results indicate that the non-intrusive approach based on infrared night vision cameras and video magnification method can accurately extract heart and respiration rates, and can be used for continuous healthcare monitoring in the night.