Heart Rate Extraction from Vowel Speech Signals

This paper presents a novel non-contact heart rate extraction method from vowel speech signals. The proposed method is based on modeling the relationship between speech production of vowel speech signals and heart activities for humans where it is observed that the moment of heart beat causes a short increment (evolution) of vowel speech formants. The short-time Fourier transform (STFT) is used to detect the formant maximum peaks so as to accurately estimate the heart rate. Compared with traditional contact pulse oximeter, the average accuracy of the proposed non-contact heart rate extraction method exceeds 95%. The proposed non-contact heart rate extraction method is expected to play an important role in modern medical applications.