Modeling photoplethysmographic signals in camera-based perfusion measurements: optoelectronic skin phantom

tests have the advantage of generating real-life data, they suffer from the lack of repeatability and are comparatively effort-intensive because human subjects are required. Consequently, studying changes in signal morphology, for example, due to aging or pathological effects, is practically impossible. As a tool to study these effects, a hardware PPG simulator has been developed: this is a phantom which simulates and generates both 1D and locally resolved 2D optical PPG signals. Here, we demonstrate that it is possible to generate PPG-like signals with various signal morphologies by means of a purely optoelectronic setup, namely an LED array, and to analyze them by means of PPGI. Signals extracted via a camera show good agreement with simulated generated signals. In fact, the first phantom design is suitable to demonstrate this qualitatively.