Non-Contact Heart-Rate Measurement Method Using Both Transmitted Wave Extraction and Wavelet Transform

Abstract

Continuous monitoring of heart-rate is expected to lead to early detection of physical discomfort. In this study, we propose a non-contact heart-rate measurement method which can be used in an environment such as driver heart-rate monitoring with body movement. The method is based on the electric field strength transmitted through the human body that changes with the diastole and systole of the heart. Unlike conventional displacement detection of the skin surface, we attempted to capture changes in the internal structure of the human body by irradiating the human body with microwaves and acquiring microwaves that pass through the heart. We first estimated the electric field strength transmitted through the heart using three receiving sensors to reduce the body movement effect. Then we decomposed the estimated transmitted electric field using stationary wavelet transform to eliminate significant distortion due to body movement. As a result, we achieved an estimation accuracy of heart-rate as high as 98% in a verification experiment with normal body movement.