Expertise: Vital Sign Acquisition

SAM3 Expertise Areas: Vital Sign Acquisition

SAM3 researchers have explored a number of methods to measure vital signs within the smart home through passive and non-contact means. These provide an option for the measurement of these vital signs without the need for the use of a device that is worn or directly used by the subject.

Application Areas

Video Magnification for the assessment of heart rate, respiration rate and blood pressure
Pressure mats for the assessment of respiration rate and other respiratory conditions including cough.
Acoustics analysis to assess cough and respiration.
Applications of vital sign measurement to assess driver attention

IEEE Video Tutorial: “The Supportive Smart Home: Solutions Enabling Independence – Ambient Sensing, Artificial Intelligence in Ethical Context“

Smart homes helping older adults live safely and independently

NRC Article on our recent projectOne morning, an older man doesn’t go to the kitchen for breakfast as he usually does. Instead, he’s still sitting …

Bruce Wallace, Phillippe Forster, Rafik Goubran, Heidi Sveistrup, William Jones, Thomas Fletcher “Small ECG Device Dry Electrode Lead Analysis to Ensure ECG Signal Quality’, AGEWELL AGM, 2025

B. Laska, P. Xi, J. Valdés, B. Wallace, J. Green, R. Goubran, F. Knoefel, “Coughprint: Distilled Cough Representations from Speech Foundation Model Embeddings”, in IEEE Transactions on Instrumentation and Measurement, 2025

P. Forster, B. Laska, R. Goubran, B. Wallace, P. Liu, H. Sveistrup, “Method for the Measurement of the Dicrotic Notch in the Photoplethysmogram Signal” at 2025 IEEE International Instrumentation Measurement Technology Conference (I2MTC), 2025

Elhajjar, Diane “A Confidence Framework for Heart Rate Estimation in Video Magnification.” MASc diss., Carleton University, 2023.

Link to Thesis

Stewart, Matthew, Caitlin Higginson, Julien Lariviere-Chartier, Elliott Lee, James Green, Rafik Goubran, Frank Knoefel, and Rebecca Robillard. “Classification of Central and Obstructive Sleep Apnea Using Respiratory Inductance Plethysmography and Convolutional Neural Networks.” In 2024 IEEE Sensors Applications Symposium (SAS), pp. 1-6. IEEE, 2024.

Link to Paper

Saiful Huq, “Differentiation of Dry and Wet Cough Sounds using A Deep Learning Model and Data Augmentation”, M.A.Sc. Thesis Carleton University, 2023.

Link to Thesis

Brady Laska, Julio J. Valdés, Pengcheng Xi, Rafik Goubran, Bruce Wallace, Madison Cohen-McFarlane, Frank Knoefel, “Cough Sound Analysis using Vocal Tract Models” 2024 IEEE International Instrumentation Measurement Technology Conference (I2MTC), 2024

Link to Paper

D. Elhajjar, B. Wallace, A. Law, R. Goubran, F. Knoefel, “Machine Learning Assessment of Heart Rate Confidence from Video Magnification “, 23rd IEEE International Conference on Bioinformatics and Bioengineering (BIBE), 2023

Link to Paper

R. Goubran, F. Knoefel, B. Wallace, N. Thomas, C. Herdman K. van Benthem, H. Sveistrup, K. Fraser, M. Kunz, P. Xi, A. Law, J. Keillor, “AGE-WELL SAM3 collaborative projects with NRC Aging-in-Place program”, AGE-WELL AGM, 2023.

SAM3 Book “Supportive Smart Homes: Their Role in Aging in Place” now available

Supportive Smart Homes: Their Role in Aging in Place By: Frank Knoefel, Bruce Wallace, Neil Thomas, Heidi Sveistrup, Rafik Goubran, Christine L. Laurin Our book …