ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

I would firstly thank the Almighty without whom nothing is possible.

I would like to express my sincere gratitude towards my
teachers. and
.. for their able support and guidance
without which all this would never have been possible.
I would also thank my parents for their encouragement and belief on
me.
And my final vote of thanks to my colleagues for their help and
support.
 ABSTRACT
Regular and non-invasive assessments of cardiovascular function are important
in surveillance for cardiovascular catastrophes and treatment therapies of
chronic diseases. Resting heart rate, one of the simplest cardiovascular
parameters, has been identified as an independent risk factor (comparable with
smoking, dyslipidemia or hypertension) for cardiovascular disease.

Currently, the gold standard techniques for measurement of the cardiac pulse
such as the electrocardiogram (ECG) require patients to wear adhesive gel
patches or chest straps that can cause skin irritation and discomfort. Commercial
pulse oximetry sensors that attach to the fingertips or earlobes are also
inconvenient for patients and the spring-loaded clips can cause pain if worn
over a long period.

The ability to monitor a patient's physiological signals by a remote, non-contact

means is a tantalizing prospect that would enhance the delivery of primary
healthcare. For example, the idea of performing physiological measurements on
the face was first postulated by Pavlidis and associates and later demonstrated
through analysis of facial thermal videos.

Although non-contact methods may not be able to provide details concerning

cardiac electrical conduction that ECG offers, these methods can now enable
long-term monitoring of other physiological signals such as heart rate or
respiratory rate by acquiring them continuously in an unobtrusive and
comfortable manner. Beyond that, such a technology would also minimize the
amount of cabling and clutter associated with neonatal ICU monitoring, long-
term epilepsy monitoring, burn or trauma patient monitoring, sleep studies, and
other cases where a continuous measure of heart rate is important.

The use of photoplethysmography (PPG), a low cost and non-invasive means of

sensing the cardiovascular pulse wave (also called the blood volume pulse)
through variations in transmitted or reflected light, for non-contact
physiological measurements has been investigated recently. This electro-optic
technique can provide valuable information about the cardiovascular system
such as heart rate, arterial blood oxygen saturation, blood pressure, cardiac
output and autonomic function.
Typically, PPG has always been implemented using dedicated light sources
(e.g. red and/or infrared wavelengths), but recent work has shown that pulse
measurements can be acquired using digital camcorders/cameras with normal
ambient light as the illumination source. However, all these previous efforts
lacked rigorous physiological and mathematical models amenable to
computation; they relied instead on manual segmentation and heuristic
interpretation of raw images with minimal validation of performance
characteristics.

Furthermore, PPG is known to be susceptive to motion-induced signal

corruption and overcoming motion artifacts presents one of the most
challenging problems. In most cases, the noise falls within the same frequency
band as the physiological signal of interest, thus rendering linear filtering with
fixed cut-off frequencies ineffective. In order to develop a clinically useful
technology, there is a need for ancillary functionality such as motion artifact
reduction through efficient and robust image analysis.
 INTRODUCTION
The Medical Mirror is a novel interactive interface that tracks and displays a
users heart rate in real time without the need for external sensors. Digital
medical devices promise to transform the future of medicine because of their
ability to produce exquisitely detailed individual physiological data. As ordinary
people start to have access and control over their own physiological data, they
can play a more active role in the management of their health. This revolution
must take place in our everyday lives, not just in the doctors office or research
lab. However, current techniques for physiological monitoring typically require
users to strap on bulky sensors, chest straps or sticky electrodes. This
discourages regular use because the sensors can be uncomfortable or
encumbering. In this work, we propose a new mirror interface for real time,
contact free measurements of heart rate without the need for external sensors.
Users can have the experience of remote health monitoring by simply looking
into the medical mirror.
 HISTORY
One night in late 2009, Ming-Zher Poh and his roommate, Dan McDuff, asked
some friends to sit in front of a laptop. Poh, an electrical- and medical-
engineering graduate student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was
trying to transform the computer's webcam into a heart-rate monitor. He hoped
that his software would allow doctors to check the vital signs of burn victims or
babies without attaching uncomfortable clips, and that it would make it easier
for adults to track their cardiovascular health over time. That night, the program
wasn't working in real time, but its measurements were near perfect. "Right
away I knew we had something special," Poh says.
A year and a half later, a large framed mirror embedded with a more refined
version of Poh's system sits in the MIT Media Lab. Behind the two-way glass, a
webcam-equipped monitor is wired to a laptop. Stand before the mirror, and the
otherwise blank monitor projects your heart rate on top of your reflection.
When your heart beats, it sends a pulse of blood through your blood vessels.
Blood absorbs light, so when more of it travels through the vessels, less of the
light hitting your skin is reflected. A webcam can pick up those small
fluctuations in reflected light, Poh says, and a computer program can translate
that data into a heart-rate reading.
Researchers had tracked this effect with a high-resolution camera, but Poh
wanted to use a simple webcam so that nearly every computer and smart phone
could double as a heart-rate monitor. To make that possible, he developed an
algorithm that could pick out the heart rate's light pattern from all the other
reflected light captured by a webcam. With help from McDuff, a grad student at
the MIT Media Lab, Poh wrote code to process the data in real time, allowing
the laptop to generate an instant heart-rate reading.
Poh plans to try to bring the mirror to market after he finishes his Ph.D. later
this year. He says the system could be used to measure other vitals as well,
including respiratory rate and blood-oxygen saturation, which should broaden
its appeal. "This shows your inner health," he says. "Maybe as people use it,
they'll say, 'This is part of my identity. It's not just how I look on the outside.'
 DESIGN OF MEDICAL MIRROR
To encourage people to keep track of their vital signs on a daily basis, a medical
mirror was designed to provide a natural user interface. We utilized an LCD
monitor with a built-in webcam to provide an interactive display .A two-way
mirror was fitted onto the frame to present a reflective surface for the users in
normal lighting conditions. This design means the LCD monitor and webcam
are not visible to the user. However, the user is visible to the webcam and the
LCD monitor can be used to project information onto the reflective surface of
the mirror. The monitor and webcam are connected to a laptop running the
analysis software in real-time.
 INTERACTION
A single user will be able to interact with the mirror at a time. When looking
into the mirror, the user will see a box appear around his/her face and a timer
will be displayed on the top corner of the box. Users will be asked to stay
relatively as the timer counts down. After 15 s, the users heart rate will be
displayed on the mirror, allowing simultaneous visualization of his/her physical
appearance and physiological state. The heart rate measurement will be updated
continuously until the user looks away.
 WORKING OF THIS TECHNOLOGY
By combining techniques in computer vision and advanced signal processing, a
persons heart rate can be computed from the optical signal reflected off the face
with an error of less than three beats per minute. An overview of the general
steps in our approach to measuring a users heart beat is as follows:-

First, an automated face tracker detects the largest face within the video feed
from the webcam and localizes the measurement region of interest (ROI) for
each video frame. The ROI is then separated into the three RGB channels and
spatially averaged over all pixels to yield a red, blue and green measurement
point for each frame and form the raw RGB signals.

Next, the raw RGB signals are decomposed into three independent components
using independent component analysis. The power spectrum of the component
containing the strongest blood volume pulse signal is then computed. Finally,
the users heart rate is quantified as the frequency that corresponds to the
highest power of the spectrum within an operational frequency band (45-240
bpm).
 ADVANTAGES
The Medical Mirror fits seamlessly into the ambient home environment.
People can play a more active role in the management of their health, as
they have complete access to their heart rate.
This interface is intended to provide a convenient means for people to
track their daily health with minimal effort.
This interface is intended to provide a convenient means for people to
track their daily health with minimal effort.

CONCLUSIONS
This project illustrates an innovative approach to pervasive health monitoring
based on state of the art technology. The Medical Mirror fits seamlessly into the
ambient home environment, blending the data collection process into the course
of our daily routines. For example, one can envision collecting health data when
using the mirror for shaving, brushing teeth etc. This interface is intended to
provide a convenient means for people to track their daily health with minimal
effort.
 FUTURE SCOPES
Creating a real-time, multi parameter physiological measurement
platform based on this technology will be the subject of future work.
In the Future, Even the Bathroom Mirror Will Be a Computer.

REFERENCES
http://affect.media.mit.edu
http://www.popsci.com
https://www.researchgate.net/publication