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Ask HN: Can someone run heartbeat detection on Trump's latest videos?

2 points by throwaway189262 ↗ HN
Kinda a crossover of tech and politics, so not sure if it's allowed here. Please be nice. I'm just curious if heartbeat detection can be used to reveal information about his health when the government is (understandably) not forthcoming

3 comments

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smt88
I don't know of software that can detect a heartbeat from a video, especially of someone who is wearing clothes and makeup.

If that exists, what would the heartrate data te you? Lots of people's heart rates increase when they're on camera.

Trump is also receiving a variety of drugs, and we don't know if they have side effects on his heart rate.

Leaving all that aside, the videos seem to be cut to remove coughing, so you'd have to first find and work around the cuts.

jmilum
It's to determine if the videos are deep fakes.
smt88
Like I said, I didn't know of software that could do that (and I still don't), but that's all beside the point because there is no value in the data.

You and OP are likely referring to the recent news of algorithms that detect heartbeats[1].

That software uses changes in skin color to detect it. If someone, like the president, is wearing opaque makeup, then that method is not going to work.

The researchers have also not said whether the raw heartbeat data can be extracted or whether they're just comparing one region of the video to another region of the video. They may be able to detect acceleration/deceleration without being able to deliver raw BPM data that a medical professional would recognize.

1. https://findbiometrics.com/researchers-use-heartbeat-detecti...