Elytix Corporation
The Science

How It Works

Remote photoplethysmography — rPPG — is a long standing, established measurement principle. We are just the first to build a continuous, longitudinal study around it — at scale.

Signal extraction

How the Scan Works

A short front-facing scan — under a minute — is enough. The camera does not record or store an image; it reads the faint, rhythmic color shifts in skin caused by blood moving with every heartbeat.

Signal-processing and machine-learning models isolate that pattern from the surrounding noise and convert it into a set of vital-sign and biomarker readings.

Light from a source enters the skin, scatters through the epidermis, dermis and capillary bed, and the diffuse and specular reflections return to a phone camera sensor.
Light enters the skin, scatters through the capillary bed, and returns to the sensor — carrying the pulse with it.
A short history

A Short History of PPG

In the early 2000s, researchers began asking whether the same measurement could be taken without contact at all — and two decades of computer vision and machine learning turned that question into a working technology.

1936–1938
PPG Is Born
Alrick Hertzman coins the term “photoelectric plethysmograph,” showing that changes in blood volume can be tracked using nothing but light.
Archival portrait of Alrick Hertzman, c. 1937
A. HERTZMAN, c. 1937
1942
First Practical Use
Glen Millikan builds the first practical oximeter using the principle, developed to monitor pilots’ oxygen levels.
WWII-era aviation medical equipment: a portable oxygen monitor with an analogue gauge and cloth-wrapped cable.
ILLUSTRATIVE — 1940s AVIATION OXYGEN EQUIPMENT
1970s
Pulse Oximetry Arrives
Takuo Aoyagi’s breakthrough makes true noninvasive blood-oxygen monitoring possible, becoming standard hospital equipment within a decade.
An early hospital pulse oximeter on a stainless steel cart in a clinical corridor.
ILLUSTRATIVE — 1970s CLINICAL MONITOR
2000s
Cameras Enter the Picture
Researchers begin asking whether a standard video camera could capture the same signal — with no contact at all.
An early-2000s camcorder mounted on a small tripod on a desk.
ILLUSTRATIVE — EARLY-2000s WEBCAM SETUP
2008
Remote PPG Proven
Verkruysse and colleagues publish the first demonstration that a webcam and ambient light alone can extract a real pulse signal remotely — the founding result behind remote PPG.
Close-up of a laptop bezel webcam with its indicator lit.
ILLUSTRATIVE — WEBCAM PPG EXPERIMENT, c. 2008
2010s
Wearables Go Mainstream
Optical pulse sensors become standard in the fitness trackers and smartwatches millions of people wear today.
A smartwatch on a wrist displaying a heart rate of 76 bpm.
ILLUSTRATIVE — OPTICAL WEARABLE SENSOR
Today
The Same Principle, Applied to a Face
The same principle explained above — now extracting a full panel of biomarkers from a single facial scan.
Today’s Scan
COMPLETE · 52s
Heart Rate
68 bpm
HRV
42 ms
Breathing Rate
14 /min
The same sensing principle

The Same Sensing Principle You Already Trust

If you have worn a fitness tracker or smartwatch, you have already trusted this underlying idea: optical sensors reading your pulse through your skin. The scan uses the same sensing principle — just from a face, without a wearable device.

What the scan measures

What the Scan Measures

Each scan surfaces a broad panel of biometric indicators, including but not limited to:

Heart Rate
The number of times your heart beats per minute, one of the most fundamental signals of cardiovascular activity.
Heart Rate Variability (HRV)
The natural variation in timing between heartbeats. A healthy heart does not beat like a metronome; higher variability generally reflects a nervous system that is well-balanced between activity and recovery.
LF/HF Ratio
The balance between the low-frequency and high-frequency rhythms within your heart rate variability, offering a closer look at how your body is balancing stress and recovery moment to moment.
Breathing Rate
The number of breaths taken per minute, a simple but telling window into respiratory and overall physiological state.
Blood Pressure
The force of blood against artery walls, expressed as two numbers reflecting the heart's contraction and rest phases.
Sympathetic Stress (SNS Index)
A marker of your body's “fight or flight” activation, the physiological response that kicks in under acute stress or exertion.
Parasympathetic Activity (PNS Index)
A marker of your body's “rest and recover” state, reflecting how effectively you return to baseline after stress.
Stress Level
Your body's stress activation right now, translated into a simple, immediate read you can check at a glance.
Stress Index
A finer-grained stress score built for tracking, sensitive enough to pick up smaller shifts from one scan to the next that a single glance might miss.
Normalized Stress Index (NSI)
A stress score adjusted for individual variation, built to hold steady for comparison across your own scans over time, even when conditions differ.
Pulse-Respiration Quotient (PRQ)
A measure of how well your cardiac and respiratory systems are working in sync with one another.
Cardiac Workload
An index of how much effort your heart is putting in to pump blood at any given moment, rising with exertion or strain and falling at rest.
Pulse Pressure
The difference between your systolic and diastolic blood pressure readings, offering insight into arterial flexibility beyond a standard blood pressure reading alone.
Mean Arterial Pressure (MAP)
The average pressure in your arteries across a full heartbeat cycle, reflecting how well oxygen-rich blood is reaching vital organs.
Wellness Index
A composite score drawing on multiple readings from your scan to reflect your overall physiological state in a single number.
Wellness Level
A simplified, at-a-glance version of the Wellness Index, translating that composite score into an easy-to-read standing.

Elytix’s scan is not a medical device and does not diagnose, treat, or provide medical advice.

Your privacy

No Facial Recognition.
No Identity Matching.

Your privacy is safe with us. This scan does not perform facial recognition — it has no ability to identify who you are. It simply reads the way light reflects off your skin to detect your biometric signals.

  • Never creates or stores a facial-geometry template.
  • Uses your camera only to extract the physiological signal.
  • Never verifies identity or authenticates a person.

The raw signal from your camera never leaves your device. Everything happens in the scan software on your phone — only the derived biomarker values are sent to Elytix. Binah never receives them.

Before any data is shared with research institutions, it is de-identified first. Nothing that identifies you as an individual is ever shared.

Where the science is headed

Where the Science Is Headed

The technology behind the scan keeps expanding. Additional risk indicators and biomarker estimates are already in development, and we expect what a single scan can surface to keep growing over time.