A Pulse Rate Estimation Algorithm Using PPG and Smartphone Camera.

The ubiquitous use and advancement in built-in smartphone sensors and the development in big data processing have been beneficial in several fields including healthcare. Among the basic vitals monitoring, pulse rate monitoring is the most important healthcare necessity. A multimedia video stream data acquired by built-in smartphone camera can be used to estimate it. In this paper, an algorithm that uses only smartphone camera as a sensor to estimate pulse rate using PhotoPlethysmograph (PPG) signals is proposed. The results obtained by the proposed algorithm are compared with the actual pulse rate and the maximum error found is 3 beats per minute. The standard deviation in percentage error and percentage accuracy is found to be 0.68 % whereas the average percentage error and percentage accuracy is found to be 1.98 % and 98.02 % respectively.