Real-Time Estimation of Heart Rate in Situations Characterized by Dynamic Illumination using Remote Photoplethysmography

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.