# Diverse R-PPG: Camera-Based Heart Rate Estimation for Diverse Subject Skin-Tones and Scenes

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2010.12769 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.12769/

## Key facts

- Cited by 5 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 24 Oct 2020.

## Built on by (most cited first, 5 of 5)

- [Camera Measurement of Physiological Vital Signs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.11547/) (2021)
- [Overcoming Difficulty in Obtaining Dark-skinned Subjects for Remote-PPG by Synthetic Augmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.06007/) (2021)
- [MobilePhys: Personalized Mobile Camera-Based Contactless Physiological Sensing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.04039/) (2022)
- [MIME: Minority Inclusion for Majority Group Enhancement of AI Performance](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.00746/) (2022)
- [Thermal Imaging and Radar for Remote Sleep Monitoring of Breathing and Apnea](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.11936/) (2024)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Heart rate (HR) is an essential clinical measure for the assessment of cardiorespiratory instability. Since communities of color are disproportionately affected by both COVID-19 and cardiovascular disease, there is a pressing need to deploy contactless HR sensing solutions for high-quality telemedicine evaluations. Existing computer vision methods that estimate HR from facial videos exhibit biased performance against dark skin tones. We present a novel physics-driven algorithm that boosts performance on darker skin tones in our reported data. We assess the performance of our method through the creation of the first telemedicine-focused remote vital signs dataset, the VITAL dataset. 432 videos (~864 minutes) of 54 subjects with diverse skin tones are recorded under realistic scene conditions with corresponding vital sign data. Our method reduces errors due to lighting changes, shadows, and specular highlights and imparts unbiased performance gains across skin tones, setting the stage for making medically inclusive non-contact HR sensing technologies a viable reality for patients of all skin tones.