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Objective: Remote photoplethysmography (rPPG) can achieve non-contact measurement of heart rate (HR) from a continuous video sequence by scanning the skin surface. However, practical applications are still limited by factors such as non-rigid facial motion and head movement. In this work, a detailed system framework for remotely estimating heart rate from facial videos under various movement conditions is described. Approach: After the rPPG signal has been obtained from a defined region of the facial skin, a method, termed ‘Project_ICA’, based on a skin reflection model, is employed to extract the pulse signal from the original signal. Main results: To evaluate the performance of the proposed algorithm, a dataset containing 112 videos including the challenges of various skin tones, body motion and HR recovery after exercise was created from 28 participants. Significance: The results show that Project_ICA, when evaluated by several criteria, provides a more accurate and robust estimate of HR than most existing methods, although problems remain in obtaining reliable measurements from dark-skinned subjects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The endothelial cells (ECs) lining of a blood vessel wall are exposed to both the wall shear stress (WSS) of blood flow and the circumferential strain (CS) of pulsing artery wall motion. Both WSS and CS keep involved in the modulation of ECs’ biochemical response and function and the temporal phase angle between the two is called stress phase angle (SPA). Previous studies at the cellular level have indicated that SPA is highly negative at sites that are prone to atherosclerosis, and hypothesized that large SPA may contribute to atherogenesis. Till now, there is no experimental data to support this hypothesis, probably due to the lack of a proper tool for measuring WSS and CS simultaneously and real time. In this study, a non-invasive ultrasonic biomechanics method was utilized to quantitatively calculate the SPA and experimentally evaluate the role of SPA in predicting early atherosclerosis. Three silicon tubes with a stiffness of 1.15, 3.62, 9.38 MPa were assembled in a pulsatile flow circuit and the values of SPA were measured to be −101.86 ± 3.65°,−170.19 ± 17.77° and −260.63 ± 18.62°, respectively. For the PVA-c phantoms, stiffness was 162.45, 235.68 and 374.24 kPa, the SPA corresponding to −170.32 ± 17.55°,−207.56 ± 10.78° and −261.08 ± 10.90°, respectively. Both phantom studies results demonstrated that SPA was highly negative in stiffer arteries. Further, experiments were taken in healthy living rats as control group (n = 3), atherosclerotic model group (n = 3), and drug treated group (n = 3), and the results showed that SPA was most negative in the model group, and SPA was least negative in the control group. Together, this study suggested that highly negative SPA appeared to be a prominent mechanical feature of vessels prone to atherosclerotic disease. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]