How to detect heart pulse rate without using any instrument in iOS sdk?

Question

I am right now working on one application where I need to find out user's heartbeat rate. I found plenty of applications working on the same. But not able to find a single private or public API supporting the same.

Is there any framework available, that can be helpful for the same? Also I was wondering whether UIAccelerometer class can be helpful for the same and what can be the level of accuracy with the same?

How to implement the same feature using : putting the finger on iPhone camera or by putting the microphones on jaw or wrist or some other way?

Is there any way to check the blood circulation changes ad find the heart beat using the same or UIAccelerometer? Any API or some code?? Thank you.

Answer 1

There is no API used to detect heart rates, these apps do so in a variety of ways. Some will use the accelerometer to measure when the device shakes with each pulse. Other use the camera lens, with the flash on, then detect when blood moves through the finger by detecting the light levels that can be seen.

Answer 2

Various DSP signal processing techniques can be used to possibly discern very low level periodic signals out of a long enough set of samples taken at an appropriate sample rate (accelerometer or reflected light color).

Some of the advanced math functions in the Accelerate framework API can be used as building blocks for these various DSP techniques. An explanation would require several chapters of a Digital Signal Processing textbook, so that might be a good place to start.