Using Contactless Heart Rate Measurements for Real-Time Assessment of Affective States

Heart rate measurements contain valuable information about a person’s affective state. There is a wide range of application domains for heart rate-based measures in information systems. To date, heart rate is typically measured using skin contact methods, where users must wear a measuring device. A non-contact and easy to use mobile approach, allowing heart rate measurements without interfering with the users’ natural environment, could prove to be a valuable NeuroIS tool. Hence, our two research objectives are (1) to develop an application for mobile devices that allows for non-contact, real-time heart rate measurement and (2) to evaluate this application in an IS context by benchmarking the results of our approach against established measurements. The proposed algorithm is based on non-contact photoplethysmography and hence takes advantage of slight skin color variations that occurs periodically with the user’s pulse.