Fujitsu unveils software to check pulse rate though smartphone camera

Japanese IT equipment and services company, Fujitsu has unveiled a new software capable of checking a person's pulse rate through a tablet or smartphone camera.

According to the company, the technology, which measured the amount of haemoglobin in a person's face, could be used to monitor the health of employees or detect people who were acting in a dishonest or suspicious manner.

Fujitsu said, the technology could check pulse reading when the camera was pointed at a face for five seconds.

In a statement the company said, "One characteristic of haemoglobin in blood is that it absorbs green light. "Based on this fact, Fujitsu Laboratories has developed a technology that detects a person's pulse by measuring changes in the brightness of the person's face as blood flows through it.

"The technology starts to work by shooting video of a subject and calculating average values for the colour components (red / green / blue) in a certain area of the face for each frame. Next it removes irrelevant signal data that is present in all three color components and extracts the brightness waveform from the green component.

"Even at a busy workplace, or any time a person is sitting in front of a PC, whether for teleconferencing or writing e-mails, their pulse can be measured during brief moments of quiet."

The new software would be presented by the company at the General Conference of the Institute of Electronics, Information, and Communication Engineers, which would open in Japan tomorrow.

Fujitsu hopes to make the software available commercially before April 2014.

The super fast action makes the technology particularly suited to potential security applications such as flagging people acting ''suspiciously'' at airports or public events, according to the Japanese IT giant.

The company is also touting the technology as a consumer application using PC webcams or smartphone cameras to help users monitor their health and understand how it changes over time.

The firm's vision for a "Human Centric Intelligent Society" envisages consumers uploading and managing this kind of data in the cloud through a dedicated health monitoring service. Plans for a similar kind of service for pet dogs had already been unveiled by the company.

The company also revealed the Hada Memori smartphone, a device that allows owner's monitor to their skin tone.

The camera comes as one among a number of planned devices to monitor stress levels, exercise habits and even sleeping patterns. The anonymised data from the devices would be sent up to the cloud where Fujitsu hopes to sell it on to beauty product manufacturers.