Today's New York Times Magazine The Year in Ideas: 10th Anniversary Special features the MIT Cardiocam:
Cardiocam is a low-cost, non-contact technology for measurement of physiological signals using a basic digital imaging device such as a Webcam. The ability to perform remote measurements of vital signs is promising for enhancing the delivery of primary health care.
Medgadget covered this in October: MIT Student Uses Webcam to Measure Heart Rate From a Distance includes a video that shows how the Cardiocam is used to create a “medical mirror” for home health monitoring.
A link to a PDF (here) has a full description of the research, including their Cardiac pulse recovery methodology:
The method uses Blind Source (Signal) Separation (BSS) by Independent Component Analysis (ICA) of the changes in the video signal:
Volumetric changes in the facial blood vessels during the cardiac cycle modify the path length of the incident ambient light such that the subsequent changes in amount of reflected light indicate the timing of cardiovascular events.
Very cool.
