A Browser-Based Remote Photoplethysmography Method for Live Heart Rate Estimation
Abstract
Remote photoplethysmography (rPPG) enables contact-free heart-rate estimation from facial video, but most web-based implementations process recordings offline, limiting their use in real-time experimental applications. We developed and, to our knowledge, provide the first ECG validation of a live rPPG implementation embedded directly within Gorilla Experiment Builder, a widely used platform for online behavioural research. We validated the method in 27 participants against simultaneously recorded electrocardiography (ECG) across nine trial durations ranging from 10 to 50 s. rPPG-derived heart rate showed excellent agreement with ECG-derived heart rate, with a mean absolute error of 1.48 bpm, a root mean square error of 2.19 bpm, and an ICC(A,1) of .960. Mean bias was small (0.40 bpm), with repeated-measures 95% limits of agreement from -3.85 to 4.66 bpm, and heart-rate error did not differ significantly by trial durations. These findings support the feasibility of live rPPG within a browser-based experimental platform for physiological feedback and adaptive online experiments without requiring webcam videos to be stored or processed offline.
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BibTeX
@misc{mohr2026browserbased,
title = {{A Browser-Based Remote Photoplethysmography Method for Live Heart Rate Estimation}},
author = {Mariana Von Mohr and Manos Tsakiris and Gianluca Finotti},
howpublished = {PsyArXiv},
year = {2026},
month = sep,
doi = {10.31234/osf.io/au9ry_v1},
url = {https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/au9ry_v1/},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - A Browser-Based Remote Photoplethysmography Method for Live Heart Rate Estimation
AU - Mariana Von Mohr
AU - Manos Tsakiris
AU - Gianluca Finotti
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/09/26
PB - PsyArXiv
DO - 10.31234/osf.io/au9ry_v1
UR - https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/au9ry_v1/
AB - Remote photoplethysmography (rPPG) enables contact-free heart-rate estimation from facial video, but most web-based implementations process recordings offline, limiting their use in real-time experimental applications. We developed and, to our knowledge, provide the first ECG validation of a live rPPG implementation embedded directly within Gorilla Experiment Builder, a widely used platform for online behavioural research. We validated the method in 27 participants against simultaneously recorded electrocardiography (ECG) across nine trial durations ranging from 10 to 50 s. rPPG-derived heart rate showed excellent agreement with ECG-derived heart rate, with a mean absolute error of 1.48 bpm, a root mean square error of 2.19 bpm, and an ICC(A,1) of .960. Mean bias was small (0.40 bpm), with repeated-measures 95% limits of agreement from -3.85 to 4.66 bpm, and heart-rate error did not differ significantly by trial durations. These findings support the feasibility of live rPPG within a browser-based experimental platform for physiological feedback and adaptive online experiments without requiring webcam videos to be stored or processed offline.
ER -