Evaluation of a camera-based monitoring solution against regulated medical devices to measure: Heart Rate, Respiratory Rate, Oxygen Saturation, and Blood Pressure

ABSTRACT Regular monitoring of common physiological signs, including heart rate, blood pressure, and oxygen saturation, can be an effective way to either prevent or detect several potential conditions. In particular, cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) are a worldwide concern. According to the World Health Organization, 31% of all deaths worldwide are from CVDs. Recently, the COVID-19 pandemic has increased the interest in remote monitoring. At present, contact devices are required to extract most of an individual’ s physiological information, which can be inconvenient for users and may cause discomfort. However, remote photoplethysmography (rPPG) technology offers a solution for this issue, which enables contactless monitoring of the blood volume pulse signal using a regular camera, and ultimately can provide the same physiological information as a contact device. In this paper we propose an evaluation of rPPG technology against medical devices in a clinical environment, with a variety of subjects in a wide range of age, height, weight, and baseline vital signs. Results have shown that rPPG technology was able to meet the initial hypothesis of mean error of +/-3 units for Heart rate, Respiration Rate, and SpO2 estimation, as well as +/-10 mmHg for Systolic and Diastolic Blood Pressure.