Date on Master's Thesis/Doctoral Dissertation

8-2009

Document Type

Master's Thesis

Degree Name

M. Eng.

Department

Electrical and Computer Engineering

Committee Chair

Farag, Aly A.

Author's Keywords

Electrical engineering; Computer engineering

Subject

Heart rate monitoring; Remote sensing

Abstract

The past decade has brought about major advances in the realms of both healthcare and biometrics. New technologies and techniques in the field of biometrics has allowed for the quick and efficient identification of people, while new healthcare technologies are allowing for less invasive monitoring of a person’s physiological state indicators. The combination of these two fields has allowed for a whole new frontier of science to be explored in the form of smart rooms. Smart rooms use the fusion of biometrics and healthcare monitoring to provide a solution to the problem of how best to monitor a patient to ensure their best possible health, safety, and comfort. This work attempts to push the boundaries of the field by creating a smart room technology that can provide nonintrusive monitoring of patient heart rate. This type of room could be used to revolutionize patient monitoring in terms of both comfort and safety. In this thesis, the culmination of several technological advances in the Computer Vision and Image Processing Lab were utilized to develop a methodology for the noncontact detection of a subject's pulse. The algorithms and methodology employed in this thesis resulted in a system that was able to identify a subject's pulse with 91.2% accuracy in a partially automated system. This demonstrates the proof of concept and shows a wide new range of possibilities for the world of medicine and patient monitoring.

Download

Share

COinS