If the finger is not fully covering the camera or the flash, it is harder to obtain a heart rate. For our trials, we used different phones to gather the heart rate measurements, therefore there were different cases on each phone. There were phones that had either no case, a thin case, or a thick case that may have affected measurements. This could have led to some of the inconsistency seen in the data. There were times when the smartphones had to be repositioned a number of times to obtain a measurement. The researchers assisted participants with their finger placement to ensure more accurate readings.

This makes finger placement an important factor when using these apps outside of a lab setting. Another factor influencing both finger placement and the accuracy of the measurements as the movement of the participants. Participants were stationary during this study, allowing for more consistent finger placement, but exercise that requires an individual to be constantly moving, such as running, could affect the accuracy of the measurement.

This means that these apps may only be reliable during specific, more stationary activities or at rest 5. Additionally, having a bulky phone case on the phone can add to the difficulty of achieving proper finger placement on the flash. Another observation that seemed to affect measurement was cold fingers, as the apps often did not provide readings in these situations. The use of these apps may not be accurate during outdoor activities, specifically in colder weather.

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Our trials took place in the winter months in Ohio. Outside temperatures were around freezing.

1. How accurate are these heart-rate tracking apps?.
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When a participant came into the lab to complete their trial they may have had cold hands and fingers, even though we were inside the temperature controlled lab. Furthermore, if a participant had an excessively sweaty hand, a heart rate measurement was harder to obtain.



Given all of these factors that may influence the accuracy of measurement, the apps may not be the best for heart rate assessment during any form of exercise. This would determine if these cofactors account for the discrepancy, or if the technology behind these smartphone-based apps needs to be improved to have more external validity. Whether it is an athlete, diabetic, or an at home rehabilitation patient, tracking heart rate during exercise is important to identify the target exercise intensity. As such, having instant access to health apps on phones could contribute to the improved management of chronic diseases such as diabetes, hypertension, or heart failure 3 , We would like to thank and acknowledge Dr.

Edward Potkanowicz, Dr. Without their help our study would not have been possible. National Center for Biotechnology Information , U.

The Bottom Line

Int J Exerc Sci. Author information Copyright and License information Disclaimer. Copyright notice. This article has been cited by other articles in PMC. Abstract People use their smartphones for everything from web browsing to tracking fitness metrics. Keywords: Smartphone, cycle ergometer, heart rate.

Open in a separate window. Figure 1.

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Figure 2. Runtastic app versus the standard ECG. Figure 3.

Allen J. Photoplethysmography and its application in clinical physiological measurement. Physiol Meas. Statistical analysis of heart rate and heart rate variability monitoring through the use of smartphone cameras. Acquisition and analysis of cardiovascular signals on smartphones: Potential pitfalls and perspectives: By the Task Force of the e-Cardiology Working Group of European Society of Cardiology. Eur J Prev Cardiol. Center for Disease Control and Prevention.

These gadgets were bulky, and you could not use them to track your heart rate anytime, anywhere. At present, you can monitor your pulse using a smartphone or tablet with a heart rate monitor app. Notwithstanding, picking the best heart rate monitor app can be stressful since the app stores offer dozens of apps that promise to be the best. While some of the heart rate apps work effectively, others may not provide accurate readings.

On that account, we have analyzed the best apps to shield you from downloading the less effective. Read through this piece to pick a heart rate monitor app that makes the most sense for your health needs. Are you looking for a free but precise heart rate monitor app for your Android smartphone and tablet? If you are, Accurate Heart Rate Monitor would be suitable. The app is free of in-app advertisements that can piss you off, and it does not require additional hardware or software to run.

If you need to measure your pulse, place your finger on the back camera lens, and stay still for ten seconds. You can use Accurate Heart Rate Monitor to track your heart rate when working out. Cardiio is a free pulse monitoring app for iPhone or iPad users. The free app comes with multiple features that would help you improve your physical fitness and your cardiovascular health. It uses two mechanisms to measure your pulse rate.

How to track your heart rate with only your smartphone - CNET

Keep trying different filter values ; maybe you need an even lower pass filter. From the comments, it sounds like your low pass filter was not good; there's tons of resources on filtering out there in the web. If you've got good visualization tools that will be the best way to test your algorithm. You can try down-sampling the data , which will smooth it out. My biggest beef with these sorts of applications is that hiccups are treated as real, live data.

One of the bikes at my gym gives useless bpm readings because, every so often, it can't find my pulse and suddenly thinks my heart's going at bpm. Which it isn't; I've asked my doctor. For a minute session the average it has is useless. I think it's more useful to see the average of the e. If you can create a separate filter that indicates anomalies, I think you'll have a much more useful application.

Consumers warned about accuracy of heart rate apps

If the period is consistent within a certain period threshold.. Then flag the HB as valid. Any beat that goes beyond a certain normalized threshold.. Would be considered an outlier an thus i would use the last detected beat instead to compute my BPM.

Top 10 best heart rate monitor apps (android/iPhone) 12222

Another more complex approach would be to use a Kalman filter or something of sorts to be able to predict the bpm and get more accurate readings.. It is only after a few skips that the app will sense that the readings are not valid and stop the reading. It sounds like you may already have another method, but one thing you could try is to use a small median filter. For example, using the median of, say, 3 to 7 input values for each output value will smooth out those peaks without destroying the overall shape of the non-anomylous data.

You're trying to do detect a single heart beat "manually", that won't be very robust. I'd say that your best bet is something like a pitch or frequency detection library the math for detecting the frequency of a color change and for detecting the frequency of a sound has to be identical. Perhaps something like aubio which I found via this stackoverflow answer to the search "frequency detection" can help you. First addressing your finger-on-the-lens problem. When the finger is on the lens, you don't get a static black frame as one might assume.

The ambient light actually passes through your finger to create a reddish frame.