OREANDA-NEWS. Fujitsu Laboratories Limited today announced that it has developed a technology to measure a person's pulse in real time using a built-in camera or webcam in a PC, smartphone or tablet.

Fujitsu Laboratories has developed a technology that detects a person's pulse by measuring variations in the brightness of the person's face thought to be caused by the flow of blood. It is based on the characteristic of hemoglobin in blood, which absorbs green light. It requires no special hardware and can measure pulse rate simply by pointing a camera at a person's face for as little as five seconds. It also automatically chooses moments when the person's body and face are relatively still to minimize the effects of irrelevant data on measurements. This technology has a wide range of potential uses, including health monitoring and maintenance as well as security applications.

Details of this technology are being presented at the 2013 General Conference of the Institute of Electronics, Information, and Communication Engineers, opening March 19 in Gifu, Japan.

In recent years, there has been increasing awareness about the need to maintain the health of employees and senior citizens, raising the demand for new, more convenient ways for individuals to monitor and manage their health, anytime and anywhere.

As part of a health-support service that can be customized to each person's needs, Fujitsu Laboratories is aiming to create a way for people to track their health and store the resulting data in the cloud for analysis, helping them better understand their health and how it changes over time.

Fujitsu is committed to building the technological platforms needed to advance the Company's vision of a Human Centric Intelligent Society, making it possible for people to use smartphones or tablets, or a computer at work or at home, to track their health, collect the resulting data, upload it to the cloud, and perform real-time analyses to provide individualized services for their personal needs.