After connected watches, Wi-Fi wants to monitor your heart

If you want to visualize your heart rate in real time, your first reflex would generally be to turn to a connected watch or a heart rate belt. A team of researchers announces that a simple Raspberry Pi could monitor your heart rate with very good precision. The Wi-Fi chip of the device would prove to be extremely precise to detect the frequency of your heart beats.

Analyze heart rate thanks to Wi-Fi

It almost sounds like a science fiction novel. However, researchers would have managed to detect the human heart rate with a simple Raspberry Pi equipped with a Wi-Fi chip. In a paper named “pulse-fi: a low cost system for precise monitoring of heart rate thanks to Wi-Fi channel state information”, the team explains that Wi-Fi signals are sometimes absorbed by the objects they cross.

The idea is to install a Wi-Fi transmitter to send a signal through an individual and to capture what comes out on the other side, using a receiver.
The data is then processed by a machine learning algorithm, specially led to identifying the precise signal disturbances which correspond to heartbeat. From there, it becomes possible to monitor a person’s heart rate, without even touching it.

Pulse-fi is non-invasive and even works in motion

The researchers tried Pulse-Fi on 118 people. In just five seconds, they could observe the heart rate of a patient with clinical level. The most impressive in history? The method works whatever the position of the individual; Standing, seated and even moving (like walking).

If we could expect at an astronomical price for such a device, the results were obtained with a simple Raspberry Pi card marketed for less than 100 euros.
Obviously, given the nature of the project, it is strongly advised not to try to make a pulse-fi from a Raspberry yourself.