Contactless Heartbeat Measurement Using Speckle Vibrometry.

Area of Science:

• Biomedical Engineering
• Medical Monitoring
• Physiological Measurement

Background:

• Continuous heart rate monitoring is crucial for patient assessment in general wards.
• Current methods like manual pulse checks or Electrocardiogram (ECG) have limitations for frequent, non-invasive monitoring.
• Early detection of adverse cardiac events can be improved with more frequent heart rate measurements.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the feasibility of a contactless heart rate monitoring system using speckle vibrometry (SV).
• To evaluate the system's performance in a clinical setting, mimicking a general ward scenario.
• To assess the accuracy of SV-based heart rate extraction through different textile thicknesses.

Main Methods:

• Development of a contactless measurement setup utilizing speckle vibrometry (SV).
• Implementation of a signal processing pipeline for heart rate extraction from SV data.
• Validation against Electrocardiogram (ECG) as the ground truth in supine subjects.

Main Results:

• Successful extraction of heart rate using SV through textile thicknesses of 8 mm, 32 mm, and 64 mm.
• Demonstrated feasibility of contactless heart rate monitoring in a resting scenario.
• Achieved an average error of less than 3 beats per minute compared to ECG.

Conclusions:

• Speckle vibrometry provides a viable non-invasive method for continuous heart rate monitoring in clinical settings.
• The SV system effectively measures heart rate through clothing, overcoming a significant barrier in remote patient monitoring.
• This technology holds potential for enhanced early detection of cardiac events in general ward patients.