Towards a Remote Vital Sign Monitoring in Accidents

Monitoring vital signs remotely is essential for accident victims because any movement can aggravate their health state. This paper proposes to evaluate the feasibility of heart rate measurements using a video camera with the subject lying down to simulate an emergency situation. Plane-Orthogonal-to-Skin method (POS) was used to estimate the blood volume variation. The cardiac frequency was calculated using the Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) technique. Three body positions were chosen for the study: Ventral Decubitus, Dorsal Decubitus and Lateral Decubitus. The results demonstrated the possibility to obtain reliable heart rate values in these conditions with average Root Mean Square Error (RMSE) of 3.04 bpm. Future work aims to develop and evaluate an application for mobile devices that maintain the privacy of the examined subject.