Algorithm monitors your vital signs through video of your face

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System looks for tiny changes in colour in the skin
Can measure pulse and breathing rate via a video image
New system able to work with any lighting or skin tone
Set to be developed into an app for mobile phones, tablets and computers

Published: 15:00 EST, 6 April 2015 | Updated: 15:14 EST, 6 April 2015

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It could let doctors monitor you simply through a video link - and allow newborns to be watched without sensors or other gadgets stuck to their skin.

Researchers say their highly accurate, touch-free system uses a video camera to monitor patients' vital signs just by looking at their faces.

They say it could change the way newborns are monitored - and make online consultations far more useful.

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The system can measure a patient's pulse and breathing just by analyzing the changes in one's skin colour over time.

HOW IT WORKS

The systems uses a video camera to detect nearly imperceptible changes in a person's skin colour due to changes in blood volume underneath the skin.

Pulse and breathing rates can be determined from these minute changes.

Although firms such as Philips and others have previously developed apps to read heart rate, they have only worked under certain conditions, and with certain skin tones.

The Rice version, DistancePPG, can measure a patient's pulse and breathing just by analyzing the changes in one's skin colour over time.

Although firms such as Philips and others have previously developed apps to read heart rate, they have only worked under certain conditions, and with certain skin tones.

The Rice version, DistancePPG, can measure a patient's pulse and breathing just by analysing the changes in one's skin colour over time.

Mayank Kumar, the project's lead graduate researcher, said DistancePPG will be particularly helpful to monitor premature infants for whom blood pressure cuffs or wired probes can pose a threat. In fact, they were his inspiration.

'This story began in 2013 when we visited Texas Children's Hospital to talk to doctors and get ideas,' Kumar, the lead researchers, said.

'That was when we saw the newborn babies in the neonatal ICU.

'We saw multiple wires attached to them and asked, 'Why?'

The wires monitored the babies' pulses, heart rate 'and this and that,' he recalled.

'And the wires weren't a problem.

'The problem was that the babies would roll, or their mothers needed to take care of them, and the wires would be taken off and put back on.'

That, Kumar said, could potentially damage the infants' delicate skin.

Kumar and his colleagues were aware of an emerging technique that used a video camera to detect nearly imperceptible changes in a person's skin color due to changes in blood volume underneath the skin.

Pulse and breathing rates can be determined from these minute changes.

That worked just fine for monitoring Caucasians in bright rooms, he said.

How do you feel? Video of your face may be able to tell you

But there were three challenges.

The first was the technique's difficulty in detecting color change in darker skin tones.

Second, the light was not always bright enough.

The third and perhaps hardest problem was that patients sometimes move.

The Rice team solved these challenges by adding a method to average skin-color change signals from different areas of the face and an algorithm to track a subject's nose, eyes, mouth and whole face.

'Our key finding was that the strength of the skin-color change signal is different in different regions of the face, so we developed a weighted-averaging algorithm,' Kumar said.

'It improved the accuracy of derived vital signs, rapidly expanding the scope, viability, reach and utility of camera-based vital-sign monitoring.'

By incorporating tracking to compensate for movement — even a smile — DistancePPG perceived a pulse rate to within one beat per minute, even for diverse skin tones under varied lighting conditions.

Kumar said he expects the software to find its way to mobile phones, tablets and computers so people can reliably measure their own vital signs whenever and wherever they choose.

Veeraraghavan is an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering. Sabharwal is a professor of electrical and computer engineering.

DistancePPG perceived a pulse rate to within one beat per minute, even for diverse skin tones under varied lighting conditions.

The lab's research appeared in the Optical Society journal Biomedical Optics Express.

The National Science Foundation, the Texas Instruments Fellowship, the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board and a Rice University Graduate Fellowship supported the research.