Fujitsu's new app uses a camera to read your pulse in five seconds

The company reckons the technology could be used in security and healthcare

A Fujitsu engineer using the company's new pulse-reading technology (Getty Images)

Fujitsu has revealed its new software which can check a person's pulse rate through a tablet or smartphone camera.

It says the technology, which measures the amount of haemoglobin in a person's face, could be used to monitor employees' health or detect people who are acting dishonestly or suspiciously.

The Japanese firm says the technology can give an accurate pulse reading when the camera is pointed at a face for five seconds.

In a statement the company said: "One characteristic of hemoglobin in blood is that it absorbs green light.

"Based on this fact, Fujitsu Laboratories has developed a technology that detects a person's pulse by measuring changes in the brightness of the person's face as blood flows through it.

"The technology starts to work by shooting video of a subject and calculating average values for the colour components (red/green/blue) in a certain area of the face for each frame.

"Next it removes irrelevant signal data that is present in all three color components and extracts the brightness waveform from the green component."

"Even at a busy workplace, or any time a person is sitting in front of a PC, whether for teleconferencing or writing e-mails, their pulse can be measured during brief moments of quiet."

Fujitsu will present their new software at the General Conference of the Institute of Electronics, Information, and Communication Engineers, which begins in Japan tomorrow.

It hopes to make it commercially available before April 2014.