# EnhancePPG: Improving PPG-based Heart Rate Estimation with Self-Supervision and Augmentation

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2412.17860 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.17860/

## Key facts

- Cited by 5 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 6 of its 18 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 20 Dec 2024.

## Builds on (most cited first, 6 of 6)

- [U-Net: Convolutional Networks for Biomedical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1505.04597/) (2015)
- [Q-PPG: Energy-Efficient PPG-based Heart Rate Monitoring on Wearable Devices](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.14907/) (2022)
- [Embedding Temporal Convolutional Networks for Energy-Efficient PPG-Based Heart Rate Monitoring](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.04396/) (2022)
- [KID-PPG: Knowledge Informed Deep Learning for Extracting Heart Rate from a Smartwatch](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.09559/) (2024)
- [BISeizuRe: BERT-Inspired Seizure Data Representation to Improve Epilepsy Monitoring](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.19189/) (2024)
- [PPG-based Heart Rate Estimation with Efficient Sensor Sampling and Learning Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.13636/) (2023)

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

- [Temporal Cardiovascular Dynamics for Improved PPG-Based Heart Rate Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.27297/) (2025)
- [Deriving Health Metrics from the Photoplethysmogram: Benchmarks and Insights from MIMIC-III-Ext-PPG](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.21832/) (2026)
- [End-to-end Automated Deep Neural Network Optimization for PPG-based Blood Pressure Estimation on Wearables](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.10117/) (2026)
- [Multi-site PPG: An In-the-Wild Physiological Dataset from Emerging Multi-site Wearables](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.17859/) (2026)
- [Physically-Constrained Harmonic Separation for Robust Heart and Respiratory Rate Estimation from Wrist Photoplethysmography](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.30156/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Heart rate (HR) estimation from photoplethysmography (PPG) signals is a key feature of modern wearable devices for health and wellness monitoring. While deep learning models show promise, their performance relies on the availability of large datasets. We present EnhancePPG, a method that enhances state-of-the-art models by integrating self-supervised learning with data augmentation (DA). Our approach combines self-supervised pre-training with DA, allowing the model to learn more generalizable features, without needing more labelled data. Inspired by a U-Net-like autoencoder architecture, we utilize unsupervised PPG signal reconstruction, taking advantage of large amounts of unlabeled data during the pre-training phase combined with data augmentation, to improve state-of-the-art models' performance. Thanks to our approach and minimal modification to the state-of-the-art model, we improve the best HR estimation by 12.2%, lowering from 4.03 Beats-Per-Minute (BPM) to 3.54 BPM the error on PPG-DaLiA. Importantly, our EnhancePPG approach focuses exclusively on the training of the selected deep learning model, without significantly increasing its inference latency