Infrared video based non-invasive heart rate measurement

In this paper, a non-invasive heart rate detection system with Kinect is developed. Kinect is used to measure the heart rate via the obtained near-infrared video. The color of the facial skin will fluctuate due to blood circulation, which can be extracted through image processing and empirical mode decomposition technology. The information included heart rate can thus be obtained. Compared with traditional detection methods and existing non-contact detection methods, the proposed one can measure the heart rate with high accuracy, convenience and robustness, especially in the complex illumination environments. Experiments in different scenarios have been performed to verify the efficacy of the proposed algorithm.