VitalVideos-Africa-1 is the first large-scale Sub-Saharan African dataset designed specifically for research and development in remote photoplethysmography (rPPG) and contactless vital sign measurement from facial video.

The dataset contains synchronized facial video recordings and rich physiological ground-truth signals collected from African participants, with strong representation of darker skin tones and diverse real-world recording conditions.

Access: This dataset is not publicly downloadable due to privacy regulations (identifiable faces in videos).
Access is granted under academic or commercial license upon request.

Dataset summary

Participants: 1,551
Geographic coverage: Sub-Saharan Africa
Skin tone representation: Predominantly Fitzpatrick V–VI
Age range: Adult population
Use cases:
- rPPG robustness across darker skin tones
- Heart-rate and SpO₂ estimation from facial video
- Blood-pressure related research
- Respiration-rate estimation from video
- Cross-dataset and cross-demographic benchmarking

Data modalities

Video

RGB facial video
24–30 s recordings
40–60 fps
Resolution: 1440 × 1080
Face-only and face + palm recordings
Multiple lighting scenarios (indoor, variable illumination)

Physiological ground truth

PPG waveform (≈60 Hz)
Heart rate (HR)
Oxygen saturation (SpO₂)
Blood pressure (systolic & diastolic)
Respiration waveform (partial coverage)

All signals are time-synchronized with the video.

Dataset structure (high-level)

Data are organized per participant and recording session, including:

Raw face video files (.mp4)
Time-aligned physiological signals (.json)
Metadata: age, gender, Fitzpatrick skin type

Detailed file structure and specifications are provided upon access approval.

Intended use

Allowed

Academic research and publication
Industry R&D (commercial license)
Algorithm development and evaluation
Demographic robustness analysis

Not allowed

Redistribution or public release of the dataset
Publishing raw video frames or identifiable samples
Use outside the scope of the signed license agreement

Licensing

This dataset is distributed under custom academic and commercial licenses.

Academic license: non-commercial research use by verified institutions
Commercial license: internal R&D use by companies

General license terms:
https://vitalvideos.org/license.html

How to request access

Academic: Currently not available. Please look at Europe-1 or Worldwide datasets for academic access.
Commercial: Contact pj@vitalvideos.org with your use case and intended scope.

Website: https://vitalvideos.org

Citation

If you use this dataset in academic work, please cite:

P.-J. Toye et al., VitalVideos-Africa-1: A large-scale Sub-Saharan African dataset for remote photoplethysmography,
publication pending.

(Reference details will be updated once the corresponding paper is publicly available.)

Contact

For access requests or questions:

pj@vitalvideos.org

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