Biosensing (by rPPG)

Accurate contactless pulse and breathing rate measurement

Today’s consumers want more control over all aspects of their lives – their health, their well-being and even their emotional responses. Philips Biosensing (by rPPG) makes that possible in any situation, measuring heart and breathing rate with a Standard / IR Camera, sensing changes in skin color and body movement (chest).

Biosensing (by rPPG)

Accurate contactless pulse and breathing rate measurement

Today’s consumers want more control over all aspects of their lives – their health, their well-being and even their emotional responses. Philips Biosensing (by rPPG) makes that possible in any situation, measuring heart and breathing rate with a Standard / IR Camera, sensing changes in skin color and body movement (chest).

As a world leader in HealthTech, Philips has drawn on its extensive in-house expertise in optics, video, and signal processing to create this unique technology. Through any standard video camera, it simultaneously measures pulse and breathing rate with unrivalled reliability and accuracy – even when the person is moving.

Philips Biosensing (by rPPG) is available for licensing to 3rd party manufacturers, and Philips can offer support to help you bring exciting new applications to market.

Pulse and breathing rate data are vital information whether you are monitoring your health or trying to maximize your workout. They are also key physiological indicators of emotion, and can even be used as biofeedback to aid relaxation and control stress.

How it works

Whenever the heart beats, the skin color changes because of the extra blood running through the vessels. These tiny skin color changes are undetectable by the human eye, but the Philips Biosensing (by rPPG) algorithms amplify these color changes to calculate an accurate pulse rate signal by analyzing the frequency of the color changes. For respiration the camera focuses on the rise and fall of the chest and abdomen. Again, by amplify these motions via the unique Philips algorithms, an accurate breathing rate is calculated. The measurements are completely unobtrusive and no uncomfortable pads or electrodes need to be worn.

The technology works with any skin type. What’s more, it has been proven in real-world tests to be the most accurate contactless technique for measuring vital signs. It can be integrated with low-cost cameras, and doesn’t require any specialist knowledge to use – making it ideal for a wide range of applications.

Philips Biosensing (by rPPG) is motion robust. It uses facial tracking to get an accurate reading during motion, for example when the user is moving in front of the camera or the whole environment is moving. This ensures always a pulse and breathing rate can be calculated.

Uses remote PPG (PhotoPlethysmoGraphy)
Camera tracks rise/fall of chest and abdomen to determine respiration rate
Tiny changes in skin color caused by HR are detected (invisible micro-blushes)
Philips solved many challenges associated with this technique (motion, light, etc.)

Benefits

Contactless and unobtrusive

Proven to be as accurate as on-body sensors

Simultaneous heart and breathing rate measurements with one camera capable of monitoring multiple people simultaneously

Robust to person movement (when supported with sufficient processing power)

Hygienic, no need for consumables or sensor cleaning

Long range (between 1 and 5 meters, depending on camera)

Applications

Wellness products

Manufacturers can combine Biosensing (by rPPG)with a camera, in a phone, tablet, toys or any electronic wellness product, and you have an ideal solution for “quantified self” applications.

By providing accurate, unobtrusive pulse and breathing rate measurements anywhere, they enable ‘self-tracking’ of moods, sleep patterns, activity levels and other everyday activities.

In the car

High-end vehicles are starting to feature driver monitoring cameras to improve safety and well-being. Biosensing (by rPPG) lets you take this trend further. Its accurate pulse and breathing rate data can help spot driver drowsiness, stress and attention levels, allowing the car to provide feedback or adjust environmental controls. The contactless technology doesn’t disturb the driver and works reliably irrespective of driver movement or posture – without having to be adjusted for different drivers.

Other potential applications

Sport and fitness
Gaming
Broadcasting
(Outdoor) advertisement
Security

Key publications

Below you will find an overview of the key publications on our contactless vitals signs monitoring technology. For your convenience we listed the relevant publications for particular use cases and per measurement.

Emergency Department

Capraro, G. A., Balmaekers, B., den Brinker, A. C., Rocque, M., DePina, Y., Schiavo, M. W., Brennan, K. & Kobayashi, L. (2022). Contactless vital signs acquisition using video photoplethysmography, motion analysis and passive infrared thermography devices during emergency department walk-in triage in pandemic conditions. The Journal of Emergency Medicine, 63(1), 115-129. link
Kobayashi, L., Chuck, C. C., Kim, C. K., Luchette, K. R., Oster, B. A., Merck, D. L., Kirenko, I., van Zon, K. Bartula, M., Rocque, M., Wang, H. & Capraro, G. A. (2019). Pilot study of emergency department patient vital signs acquisition using experimental video photoplethysmography and passive infrared thermography devices. In 2019 IEEE 10th Annual Ubiquitous Computing, Electronics & Mobile Communication Conference (UEMCON) (pp. 0023-0032). IEEE. link
Caspar, M., Dutilh, G., Achermann, S., Bingisser, R., & Nickel, C. H. (2021). Contact-Free monitoring of pulse rate for triage of patients presenting to the emergency department. The Journal of Emergency Medicine, 61(6), 649-657. link
Achermann, S., Caspar, M., Wirth, C., Becker, C., Rocque, M., Kirenko, I., Schlack, A., Dutilh, G., Bingisser, R. & Nickel, C. H. (2019). Contact-free monitoring of respiratory rates for triage of patients presenting to the emergency department. Resuscitation, 137, 154-155. link

Non-acuity Settings / General Ward

Varma, M., Sequeira, T., Naidu, N. K. S., Mallya, Y., Sunkara, A., Patil, P., Poojary, N., Vaidyanathan, M.K., Balmaekers, B., Thomas, J., Prasad N, S. & Badagabettu, S. (2022). Contactless monitoring of respiratory rate (RR) and heart rate (HR) in non-acuity settings: a clinical validity study. BMJ open, 12(12), e065790. link

Neonatal Intensive Care Unit

Aarts, L. A., Jeanne, V., Cleary, J. P., Lieber, C., Nelson, J. S., Oetomo, S. B., & Verkruysse, W. (2013). Non-contact heart rate monitoring utilizing camera photoplethysmography in the neonatal intensive care unit—A pilot study. Early human development, 89(12), 943-948. link
van Gastel, M., Balmaekers, B., Oetomo, S. B., & Verkruysse, W. (2018). Near-continuous non-contact cardiac pulse monitoring in a neonatal intensive care unit in near darkness. In Optical diagnostics and sensing XVIII: Toward point-of-care diagnostics (Vol. 10501, pp. 230-238). SPIE. link

Sleep Monitoring

van Gastel, M., Stuijk, S., Overeem, S., van Dijk, J. P., van Gilst, M. M., & de Haan, G. (2020). Camera-based vital signs monitoring during sleep–A proof of concept study. IEEE Journal of Biomedical and Health Informatics, 25(5), 1409-1418. link
van Meulen, F. B., Grassi, A., Van den Heuvel, L., Overeem, S., van Gilst, M. M., van Dijk, J. P., Maass, H., van Gastel, M.J.H. & Fonseca, P. (2023). Contactless camera-based sleep staging: The HealthBed study. Bioengineering, 10(1), 109. link

Contactless SpO2

Verkruysse, W., Bartula, M., Bresch, E., Rocque, M., Meftah, M., & Kirenko, I. (2017). Calibration of contactless pulse oximetry. Anesthesia and analgesia, 124(1), 136. link
Van Gastel, M., Stuijk, S., & De Haan, G. (2016). New principle for measuring arterial blood oxygenation, enabling motion-robust remote monitoring. Nature Scientific Reports, 6(1), 38609. link
Van Gastel, M., & Verkruysse, W. (2022). Contactless SpO2 with an RGB camera: Experimental proof of calibrated SpO2. Biomedical Optics Express, 13(12), 6791-6802. link

Perfusion Imaging

Lai, M., van der Stel, S. D., Groen, H. C., van Gastel, M., Kuhlmann, K. F., Ruers, T. J., & Hendriks, B. H. (2022). Imaging PPG for in vivo human tissue perfusion assessment during surgery. Journal of Imaging, 8(4), 94. link
van der Stel, S. D., Lai, M., Groen, H. C., Witteveen, M., Kuhlmann, K. F., Grotenhuis, B. A., Kok, N.F.M., van Gastel, M., Hendriks, B.H.W. & Ruers, T. J. (2023). Imaging photoplethysmography for noninvasive anastomotic perfusion assessment in intestinal surgery. Journal of Surgical Research, 283, 705-712. link

Fitness

Wang, W., den Brinker, A. C., Stuijk, S., & de Haan, G. (2017). Robust heart rate from fitness videos. Physiological measurement, 38(6), 1023. link
Wang, W., Balmaekers, B., & De Haan, G. (2016). Quality metric for camera-based pulse rate monitoring in fitness exercise. In 2016 IEEE International Conference on Image Processing (ICIP) (pp. 2430-2434). IEEE. link

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Biosensing (by rPPG)

Accurate contactless pulse and breathing rate measurement

Biosensing (by rPPG)

How it works

Benefits

Applications

Wellness products

In the car

Other potential applications

Key publications

Contact us

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