Non-Contact Heart Rate Detection Based on Hand Vein Transillumination Imaging

• Main Authors: Shuqiang Yang, Deqiang Cheng, Jun Wang, Huafeng Qin, Yike Liu
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2021-09-01
• Series: Applied Sciences
• Subjects: PPG; vein authentication; non-contact heart rate detection; ordinary camera; transillumination imaging
• Online Access: https://www.mdpi.com/2076-3417/11/18/8470

Vein recognition technology identifies human vein characteristics under near-infrared light and compares it with stored vein information for personal identification. Although this has high anti-counterfeiting performance, it is possible to fabricate artificial hands that simulate vein characteristics to deceive the identity authentication system. In view of this potential deficiency, we introduced heart rate information to vein authentication, a means of living body detection, which can further improve the anti-counterfeiting effect of vein authentication. A hand vein transillumination imaging experiment was designed to prove its effectiveness. In the proposed method, a near-infrared light source is used to transilluminate the hand, and the transillumination images are collected by a common camera. Then, the region of interest is selected for gray-scale image processing, the feature value of each frame is extracted by superimposing and averaging the images, and then the one-dimensional pulse wave is drawn. Furthermore, the baseline drift phenomenon is filtered by morphological methods, and the maximum percentage frequency is determined by Fast Fourier Transform, that is, the pulse wave frequency. The heart rate value is then calculated, and finally, the stability of the heart rate detection result is evaluated. The experiment shows that the method produces accurate and stable results, demonstrating that it can provide living information (heart rate value) for vein authentication, which has great application prospects and development opportunities in security systems.