• Journal of People, Plants, and Environment
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• v.22 no.2
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• pp.219-229
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• 2019

This study was carried out to verify the accuracy of fitness tracking devices in monitoring heart rate and energy consumption and to contribute to the development of a forest exercise program that can recommend the intensity and amount of forest exercises based on personal health-related data and provide monitoring and feedback on forest exercises. Among several commercially available wearable devices, Fitbit was selected for the research, as it provides Open API and data collected by Fitbit can be utilized by third parties to develop programs. Fitbit provides users with various information collected during forest exercises including exercise time and distance, heart rate, energy consumption, as well as the altitude and slope of forests collected by GPS. However, in order to verify the usability of the heart rate and energy consumption data collected by Fitbit in forest, the accuracy of heart rate and energy consumption were verified by comparing the data collected by Fitbit and reference. In this study, 13 middle-aged women were participated, and it was found that the heart rate measured by Fitbit showed a very low error rate and high correlation with that measured by the reference. The energy consumption measured by Fitbit was not significantly different from that measured in the reference, but the error rate was slightly higher. However, there was high correlation between the results measured by Fibit and the reference, therefore, it can be concluded that Fitbit can be utilized in developing actual forest exercise programs.

• Journal of Multimedia Information System
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• v.8 no.1
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• pp.1-10
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• 2021

Heart Rate is a crucial physiological parameter that provides basic information about the state of the human body in the cardiovascular system, as well as in medical diagnostics and fitness assessments. At present day, it has been demonstrated that facial video-based photoplethysmographic signal captured using a low-cost RGB camera is possible to retrieve remote heart rate. Traditional heart rate measurement is mostly obtained by direct contact with the human body, therefore, it can result inconvenient for long-term measurement due to the discomfort that it causes to the subject. In this paper, we propose a non-contact-based remote heart rate measuring approach of the subject which depends on the color intensity variation of the subject's facial skin. The proposed method is applied in two regions of the subject's face, forehead and cheeks. For this, three different algorithms are used to measure the heart rate. i.e., Fast Fourier Transform (FFT), Independent Component Analysis (ICA) and Principal Component Analysis (PCA). The average accuracy for the three algorithms utilizing the proposed method was 89.25% in both regions. It is also noteworthy that the FastICA algorithm showed a higher average accuracy of more than 92% in both regions. The proposed method obtained 1.94% higher average accuracy than the traditional method based on average color value.

• Journal of Korea Multimedia Society
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• v.23 no.11
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• pp.1388-1395
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• 2020

Daily monitoring of the heart rate can facilitate detection of heart-related diseases in their early stages. Therefore, providing an easy-to-use and noninvasive heart rate monitoring system has been a very popular research topic in the field of healthcare. One of good candidate methods is to use commonly available cameras and extract information that can help to estimate heart rate from a human face. Generally, such information can be retrieved using two different approaches: photoplethysmography (PPG) and ballistocardiography (BCG). PPG exploits slight color changes caused by blood volume variations during heartbeats; thus, it tends to be vulnerable to unstable lighting conditions. BCG exploits subtle head motions caused by pumped blood travelling through the carotid artery during heartbeats; thus, it is vulnerable to the voluntary head movements that are not related to heartbeats. Nevertheless, most related works use either to estimate the heart rate. In this paper, we propose to combine two approaches to be robust to challenging conditions. Specifically, we explore possible ways to combine raw signals obtained from two approaches and verify that the proposed combination shows better accuracies under challenging conditions, such as voluntary head movements and ambient lighting changes.

• Journal of Environmental Health Sciences
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• v.41 no.4
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• pp.223-230
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• 2015

Objectives: There is considerable evidence that polluted ambient air contributes to the risk of cardiovascular morbidity and mortality. Heart rate variability (HRV) is defined as the variation in heartbeat intervals and has been reported as a biological marker of cardiovascular disease. This article reviews the existing literature in order to examine the association between air pollution and HRV. Methods: Literature was searched using Web of Science with the key words of "air pollution", "heart rate variability" and other related terms. A total of 156 articles were listed. For review, 21 of those listed publications were chosen after excluding studies regarding chamber studies, occupational environment, secondhand smoke and automobile exhaust. Results: Research methods employed in the publications were classified by type of participants (elderly/adult), air pollution monitoring (ambient/personal) and HRV monitoring (continuous/spot). Among HRV parameters, power in the low frequency range (LF), power in the high frequency range (HF) and standard deviation of all NN intervals (SDNN) were all associated with air pollutants. The chosen studies were mostly based on elderly populations. In studies based on continuous HRV monitoring, LF and SDNN significantly decreased when $PM_{2.5}$ exposure increased. Conclusion: Continuous HRV monitoring combined with personal exposure monitoring has been one of the most common study methods in recent publications. We expect that this review will be useful for the study of the association between air pollution and cardiovascular effects using HRV.

• Journal of Sensor Science and Technology
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• v.26 no.5
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• pp.301-305
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• 2017

This paper presents a wearable human health-monitoring band. The band consists of a body temperature detector (BTD) and a hear rate detector (HRD). The BTD and HRD are realized using an inkjet-printed flexible temperature sensor and a commercial heart rate sensor module, respectively. The sensitivity of the fabricated BTD was found to be $-31/^{\circ}C$ with a linearity of 99.82%. The HRD using the commercial heart rate sensor module has a good performance with a standard deviation of 0.85 between the data of a commercial smart watch and the fabricated HRD.

• Journal of the Semiconductor & Display Technology
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• v.12 no.2
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• pp.73-78
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• 2013

This paper proposes a portable electrocardiograph and smart device-based heart health monitoring and risk notification system. The proposed system consists of a portable electrocardiograph and a smart device for a system user, and a web-based monitoring system for observers. This system can improve the convenience and efficiency of measurement by using a light-weight portable electrocardiograph and a smart device. In addition, any authorized person such as caregiver or family member who is not related to medical institution can monitor users'heart health in real-time using the web-based monitoring system. Therefore, a user and authorized remote observers can efficiently monitor and manage user's heart health in daily-life even without any medical institution's help, and can preemptively deal with any possible dangerous situations, such as degeneration of a cardiac disorder and sudden cardiac death.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics and Information Engineers
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• v.54 no.5
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• pp.138-142
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• 2017

Photoplethysmography (PPG) is a simple and low-cost optical technique that can be used to detect blood volume changes in the microvascular bed of tissue. It is often used non-invasively to make measurements at the skin surface. In this paper, we described the implementation heart rate monitoring system using PPG sensor. Proposed system is collected data using PPG sensor and heart rate was detected using second derivative method. In order to verify the effectiveness of the proposed method, we performed the measurements of RR-intervals with a commercial medical device.

• Journal of Fashion Business
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• v.22 no.4
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• pp.118-129
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• 2018

The purpose of this study is to develop ECG electrode materials for the heart rate monitoring smart band, a smart device used for ECG and heart rate measurement. The purpose of the evaluation is to assess properties and conductivity of electrodes of the existing heart rate monitoring smart band, and to determine suitability through a representative conductive sample. Because level of thickness does not differ significantly from value of conductive specimen from thickness of the smart band, it can be used as a conductive electrode. Surface conductivity of conductive samples and smart bands, is expected to be available as electrodes except for conductive film. Also, since the knit have conductivity only in the metal processing layer, it is necessary to use electrodes on the part of the metal processing layer that is conductive when applying the knit. Tensile strength and electrical conductivity of the tensile were generally revealed to have a tendency. Thickness of the specimen that can be used as an electrode for the smart band is suitable for all samples, electrical resistance, conductive woven, conductive knit, and conductive cord. In the case of conductive cord, however, the electrode attached to the human body will not conform to the flat shape of the electrode attached to the human body. Therefore, the conductive woven and the conductive knit will be available as an electrode.

• Korean Journal of Oriental Medicine
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• v.14 no.1
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• pp.85-89
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• 2008

This study is to investigate cardiotonic effect of acupuncture on heart rate variability(HRV) analyzed by a nonlinear way(DFA, Detrended Fluctuation Analysis). It was designed as a randomized, single-blind, waiting list-controlled, cross-over study. We assessed heart rate and R-R intervals in Circadian electrocardiography with a Holter monitoring device for twelve hospitalized participants. The compatible analytical program, Zymed, was used for generating the signals of R-R intervals from 24 hour-ECG. In DFA analysis, we produced DFA alpha 1, alpha 2 parameters according to the process of Cygwin module of Linux server. We tested if there was any difference between HRV parameters using SPSS, a statistical package. There was no difference between acupuncture and no treatment group in DFA alpha 2 parameter {95% Confidence Interval (-)0.058 - 0.037, P = .565}. Two group all showed large intra-individual variations. Consequently, acupuncture treatment did not modulate the complexity of HRV in a DFA analysis. This study can be a rationale for acupuncture's properties on cardiovascular and autonomic systems.

• The Transactions of the Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers D
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• v.51 no.4
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• pp.167-174
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• 2002

This study describes a fetal heart rate(FHR) estimation algorithm using phonogram. Using a phonogram amplifier, various fetal heart sounds are collected in a university hospital. The FHR estimation algorithms consists of a lowpass filter, decimation, envelop detection, pitch detection, and post-processing. The post-processing is the FHR decision procedure using all informations of fetal heart rates. Using the algorithm and other parameters of fetal heart sound, a fetal monitoring software was developed. This can display the original signals, the FFT spectra, FHR and its trajectory. Even though the fetal phonogram amplifier detects the fetal heart sounds well, the sound quality is not so good as the ultrasonography. In case of very week fetal heart sound, autocorrelation of it showed clear periodicity. But two main peaks in one period is an obstacle in pitch detection and peaks are not so vivid. The proposed FHR estimation algorithm showed very accurate and stable results. Since the developed software displays multiple parameters in real time and has convenient functions, it will be useful for the phonogram-style fetal monitoring device.