Remote Estimation of Peripheral Oxygen Saturation and Pulse Rate From Facial Analysis Using a Smartphone Camera

Vital sign monitoring is an invaluable tool for healthcare professionals, both in the hospital and at home. Traditional measurement devices provide accurate readings but require physical contact with the patient which often is unsuitable, furthermore contact-based devices have been reported to fail by loosing contact due to movement as severe events occur, therefore, a contactless method is necessary.

We hypothesize that, in ideal scenarios, it is possible to estimate both SpO₂ and pulse rate using only facial video recorded with a smartphone's front-facing camera. To test this hypothesis, a dataset of 10 healthy subjects performing various breathing patterns while being recorded with a smartphone camera was collected during ideal lighting conditions.

Using advanced image and signal processing methods to acquire remote photoplethysmography (rPPG) estimates from a patient's forehead, our proposed method can achieve SpO₂ estimation results with A_rms = 1.34% (accuracy RMS) and MAE ± STD = 1.26 ± 0.68% (mean average error) across a SpO₂ range of 92% to 99% (percentage point SpO2) and pulse rate estimation results with A_rms = 3.91 bpm (beats per minute) and MAE ± STD = 3.24±2.11 bpm across a pulse rate range of 60 bpm to 90 bpm. We conclude from these results, that remote vital sign estimation using facial videos recorded entirely with a smartphone camera is possible.