This is incredibly impressive and potentially important work. Researchers have figured out a way to amplify tiny changes in color and position in video. This allows you to accurately measure a person’s pulse or respiratory cycle from a video. Importantly it works with any video, it’s entirely done in post-processing, so no special equipment required.

Imagine a lie detector built using this technique. No more hooking people up to a machine to measure their response. You could potentially go back to old interrogations and measure people’s response after the fact.

A 30-second video of a newborn baby shows the infant silently snoozing in its crib, his breathing barely perceptible. But when the video is run through an algorithm that can amplify both movement and color, the baby’s face blinks crimson with each tiny heartbeat.