To Monitor Your Heart, Check Your Cell Phone

For most people, heart rate monitors are simple devices strapped to the chest that records a heartbeat’s measurements in real-time. But for some populations–like burn victims or infants–chest straps can be burdensome and painful.

In 2009, doctoral candidates Ming-Zher Poh (SM’07, EECS) and Daniel McDuff sought to change this. Today, their invention, Cardiocam, is a non-contact device that can measure heart rate using a patient’s owns web cam, a cell phone camera, or even a mirror.

Popular Science Magazine named Cardiocam one of the ten best inventions of 2011, and it won a $50,000 award from the Center for Integration of Medicine and Innovative Technology.

From Popular Science:

“When your hear beats, it sends a pulse of blood through your blood vessels. Blood absorbs light, so when more of it travels through the vessels, less of the light hitting your skin is reflected. A webcam can pick up those small fluctuations in reflected light, Poh says, and a computer program can translate that data into a heart-rate reading.”

Part of the Media Lab’s Affective Computing group, Poh and McDuff worked with their advisor, Affective Computing group head Rosalind Picard, and developed an algorithm that separates small fluctuations in the heart rate’s light pattern from other reflected light captured by a webcam and wrote code that processes the data in real time. Previous research used a high-resolution camera, but the ability to use a web cam or cell phone makes virtually any computer or smart phone a heart rate monitor.

Similar technology could be applied to a bathroom mirror, using a wireless webcam installed behind the mirror. Such a mirror is on display at the Media Lab and can get accurate readings from three people in the camera’s view at the same time.

Poh has plans to commercialize the product in 2012, and envisions the Cardiocam eventually measuring respiratory rate and blood-oxygen saturation.

For more information, view the video demonstration on the Popular Science website or visit the Affective Computing group web page.