Non-Contact Breathing Rate Detection Using Optical Flow

Breathing rate is a vital health metric that is invaluable indicator of the overall health of a person. In recent years, the non-contact measurement of health signals such as breathing rate has been a huge area of development, with a wide range of applications from telemedicine to driver monitoring systems. This paper presents an investigation into a method of non-contact breathing rate detection using a motion detection algorithm, optical flow. Optical flow is used to successfully measure breathing rate by tracking the motion of specific points on the body. In this study, the success of optical flow when using different sets of points is evaluated. Testing shows that both chest and facial movement can be used to determine breathing rate, but to different degrees of success. The chest generates very accurate signals, with a RMSE of 0.63 on the tested videos. Facial points can also generate reliable signals when there is minimal head movement but are much more vulnerable to noise caused by head/body movements. These findings highlight the potential of optical flow as a non-invasive method for breathing rate detection and emphasize the importance of selecting appropriate points to optimize accuracy