ROI analysis for remote photoplethysmography on facial video

As wide spreading of camera-equipped devices to the daily living environment, there are enormous opportunities to utilize the camera-based remote photoplethysmography (PPG) for daily physiological monitoring. In the camera-based remote PPG (rPPG) monitoring, the region of interest (ROI) is related to the signal quality and the computational load for the signal extraction processing. Designating the best ROI on the body while minimizing its size is essential for computationally efficient rPPG extraction. In this study, we densely analyzed the face region to find the computationally efficient ROI for facial rPPG extraction. We divided the face into seven regions and evaluated the quality of the signal of each region using the area ratio of high-SNR and high-correlation, and mean and standard deviation (SD) of SNR and correlation coefficient. The results show that a forehead and both cheeks especially have a potential to be a good candidates for computationally efficient ROI. On the other hand, the signal quality from a mouth and a chin was relatively low. A nasion and a nose have a limitation to be efficient ROI.