Motion robust PPG-imaging through color channel mapping

Photoplethysmography (PPG)-imaging is an emerging non-invasive technique that maps spatial blood-volume variations in living tissue with a video camera. In this paper, we clarify how cardiac-related (i.e., ballistocardiographic; BCG) artifacts occur in this imaging modality and address these using algorithms from the remote-PPG literature. Performance is assessed under stationary conditions at the immobilized hand. Our proposal outperforms the state-of-the-art, Blood Pulsation Imaging (Biomed. Opt. Express 5, 3123 (2014)), even in our best attempt to create diffused illumination. BCG-artifacts are suppressed to an order of magnitude below PPG-signal strength, which is sufficient to prevent interpretation errors.