Disqus
Fujitsu Laboratories developed a technology that can measure a person’s pulse in real time using a camera phone, or any other digital camera.
The magic happens by measuring variations in the brightness of the person’s face thought to be caused by the flow of blood. It is based on the characteristic of hemoglobin in blood, which absorbs green light without requiring any special hardware. In that sense, the system work by simply pointing a camera at a person’s face for as little as five seconds.
The software starts to work by shooting video of a subject and calculating average values for the color components (red/green/blue) in a certain area of the face for each frame. Next comes the removal of irrelevant signal data that is present in all three color components only to extract the brightness waveform from the green component. The pulse rate is then computed based on the peaks in that brightness waveform.
Fujitsu Laboratories now looks to put this tech into practical use in fiscal 2013 for a variety of applications such as a security or health monitoring and maintenance solution, building it into smartphones, tablets and PCs…
I would say that’s pretty awesome, what do you think?
About The Author
Dusan Belic
Dusan has been using smartphones since their introduction and is now following the latest trends in the industry. The "convergence" is what he's most excited about, and writing about it is the next logical thing to do. He thinks that using a smartphone is what everyone who cares about their time should do. In addition to his interests in mobile phones, Dusan also loves to experiment with the latest web and mobile 2.0 services. The idea of accessing and managing your information from any device no matter where you are simply amazes him. Whether it's an online to-do list, note taking service or a video sharing social network, he's there to try it out. He admits though, he's still searching for the ultimate web-based organizational tool, which "sings" perfectly with the mobile PIM application. Dusan used to run SymbianWatch.com which later became part of IntoMobile. He lives in Serbia, South-East Europe, from where he edits the site on a daily basis.
