Reflection based blood pulsation measurement using linear polarization of light

Heart rate (HR) measurement is a critical step involved in diagnosis of several health related problems. This paper presents a reflection based integrated polarized imaging solution for HR measurement. Degree of linear polarization (DoLP), defined as the ratio between the power of the linearly polarized light component and the total incident light power, is calculated using polarized images. Experimental results show that the DoLP of reflected part of the incident linearly polarized light is exponentially related with HR. A very good correlation of 87.3% is observed between DoLP and exponential value of HR. Statistical analysis shows good accuracy of the experimental data. It suggests that a real time integrated polarized imaging based HR measurement device can be developed based on the proposed system.