Remote PhotoPlethysmoGraphy Using SPAD Camera for Automotive Health Monitoring Application

Remote PhotoPlethysmoGraphy (rPPG) applications allow to extract cardiac information just analyzing a video stream of a person face. In this work we propose the use of a Single-Photon Avalanche Diode (SPAD) camera in order to perform rPPG with higher accuracy, especially in low illumination conditions, exploiting the higher sensitivity of the SPAD sensors. In particular, we suggest the adoption of a rPPG application in an automotive environment in order to monitor, in a non invasive fashion, the driver's health state and potentially avoid accidents caused by acute illness states. Some quantitative results are shown obtained in realistic situations in which the SPAD camera was mounted inside a vehicle cockpit and compared with rPPG heart rate estimations data collected with a portable wearable ECG device.