Monitoring of blood oxygen saturation rate and heart rate via Eulerian video magnification method noncontact

Abstract

Heart rate and peripheral oxygen saturation (SpO₂) monitoring is critical during surgeries and in intensive care units. Over the last decades, several studies have addressed noncontact monitoring of vital signs, but few reports have focused on SpO₂. This article presents an Heart rate and SpO₂ monitoring method without physical contact with the patient using imaging photoplethysmography. Eulerian video magnification (EVM) was employed in the proposed solution to amplify the changes in skin color due to the heart cycle. The developed software operates on a widely available, low-cost open hardware platform. Experiments were performed with nine healthy individuals. When comparing the experimental results to those obtained with a reference pulse oximeter, the proposed solution showed good accuracy in SpO₂ measurements, with a difference of less than 2%, meeting the requirements of the standard that regulates pulse oximetry equipment.