A video camera, combined with the appropriate complex software, allows for the accurate recording of a person's heart rate and breathing rate remotely, without the need for medical personnel to even touch the patient with a measuring instrument.
The new inexpensive method of recording vital biological markers - which has an error rate of only 1% to 3% - will provide significant assistance in future telemedicine, including facilitating the early diagnosis of a heart attack or stroke at home.
Researchers at Georgia Regents University Medical College in the US and the BanNa Biomedical Research Institute in China, led by neuroscientist Dr. Joe Qian, who published the relevant paper in the journal “PLoS ONE”, are already working to do something similar with remote blood pressure measurement.
"Heart rate and breathing rate obviously tell us a lot about a person's condition. Normally, medical staff have to come into physical contact with a patient to measure these indicators. But the algorithms we developed allow us to quickly and accurately translate, for example, a subtle movement of the skin in combination with breathing, into an accurate measurement of the rate at which someone is breathing," said Joe Chien.
These software algorithms were originally developed in the context of research on the "translation" of brain activity and were later adapted to interpret heart and lung rhythms. For example, with each heartbeat, the amount of blood flowing through the blood vessels increases and decreases. When the amount of blood increases, more light is absorbed than reflected, and this is recorded by the camera.
In the case of breathing, on the other hand, the process of inhaling and exhaling causes small bodily movements, with the result that the body, as it moves, produces different wavelengths of light, which is also "captured" by the camera and then interpreted by the software accordingly. In fact, according to the researchers, because the heart rate and breathing rate are closely linked, the second indicator could be calculated based on the first alone.
The researchers confirmed the accuracy of the new technique by conducting various tests on humans and animals. The software can "work" with any video camera, as well as other sensors.
Source: nooz.gr
