proband’s long hair, which covered the back of the up-
per body. The FFT and the Welch estimation method
were still able to predict the correct respiration rate.
4.6 Overall Comparison
Overall, 35 videos were considered for the testing. In
general, in all scenarios the respiration rate could be
classified correctly, see Table 6. While the peak de-
tection method was able to detect the correct respi-
ration rate only in 94.4 % of the cases, the FFT and
the Welch spectral estimation worked perfectly for all
scenarios. Therefore, it is recommended to use one of
those two methods to determine the frequency for the
respiration rate.
Table 6: Overall classification rates.
Method FFT Welch Peak
Overall 100 % 100 % 94.4 %
5 CONCLUSION AND FUTURE
WORK
In this study, we developed a new method for remote
respiration rate determination, which is based on four
ROIs, an optical flow based tracking, a PCA and a fre-
quency determination. Furthermore, an intense eval-
uation of different environmental parameters and sce-
narios was conducted. The results show that the pre-
sented method worked robustly in all scenarios. The
best frequency determination methods were the FFT
and the Welch spectral estimation. The results reveal
that it is possible to use such a respiration rate esti-
mation system in a domestic environment for AAL.
Further studies have to evaluate whether the accuracy
is sufficient for clinical use.
For future work, the influence of motion has to
be evaluated. If the respiration rate and the superim-
posed motion signal could be separated, this method
could be used as well in the field of e-rehabilitation
or in professional sports. Moreover, we intend to de-
velop a real-time working system to detect the respi-
ration rate immediately.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This project is funded by the European Social Fund
(ESF). We furthermore would like to express our
thanks to all the persons who contributed to this
project with their recordings.
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