Glossary

Every acronym in our docs, defined in plain English.

rPPG, FHIR, HIPAA, LOINC, POS, SDNN — our domain is heavy on three-letter abbreviations. Here's the running list we share with every new engineer, clinician, or customer on their first day.

A

API key API

A secret string that authenticates your SDK or server. Prefix ssp_live_ in production, ssp_test_ in sandbox. Rotate at least yearly and never ship a live key inside a client binary.

Autonomic balance Signal

The ratio of low-frequency to high-frequency HRV power (LF/HF), a rough indicator of sympathetic vs. parasympathetic tone. We report it alongside HRV for stress dashboards.

B

BAA Compliance

Business Associate Agreement. A HIPAA contract that lets a covered entity share PHI with a vendor. SmartScanPro signs BAAs on the Pro plan and above.

Bland-Altman Stats

A plot that shows the difference between two measurement methods against their mean. The standard way to report agreement between a new sensor and a gold-standard reference in clinical validation.

bpm Unit

Beats per minute. Our default unit for heart rate. UCUM code /min. LOINC 8867-4 for "Heart rate by pulse oximetry".

C

CHROM Algorithm

A classical rPPG method (de Haan & Jeanne, 2013) that combines the red, green, and blue color channels to suppress motion-induced intensity changes while preserving the pulse signal.

Confidence score Signal

A 0–1 value we return with every reading, reflecting signal-to-noise ratio, motion, and lighting quality. Below 0.6 we recommend you discard or re-capture.

CPT 99453/99454/99457 Billing

US remote-patient-monitoring billing codes covering device setup, data transmission, and clinician review. Many of our RPM customers bill against these.

F

FHIR Integration

Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources. The modern standard for exchanging clinical data. We produce FHIR R4 Observation resources out of the box.

FHIR Observation Integration

The FHIR resource representing a single measurement (heart rate, SpO₂, etc.). Includes a LOINC code, a value, a unit, an effective time, and a subject reference.

Fitzpatrick scale Biology

A six-tier classification of skin phototype (I = very fair, VI = deeply pigmented). We stratify validation cohorts across all six and publish per-subgroup accuracy.

H

HIPAA Compliance

The US Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act. Governs how PHI is handled. Our on-device pipeline keeps raw video from ever becoming PHI in the first place.

HRV Vital

Heart Rate Variability. The beat-to-beat variation in time between heartbeats. A window into autonomic nervous system state. We compute both RMSSD and SDNN from a 30-second scan.

I

Idempotency key API

A unique client-supplied string attached to a POST so retrying it doesn't create a duplicate record. Pass Idempotency-Key header; we dedupe for 24 hours.

ICD-10 Integration

The international coding system for diagnoses. We return ICD-10 codes when parsing a discharge summary or prescription.

L

LOINC Integration

Logical Observation Identifiers Names and Codes. A universal vocabulary for lab and clinical observations. Every metric we return ships with its LOINC code.

LF/HF ratio Signal

The ratio of low-frequency to high-frequency spectral power in an HRV trace. A commonly used, debated proxy for sympathetic / parasympathetic balance.

M

MAE Stats

Mean Absolute Error — the average magnitude of the difference between our reading and a reference sensor. Lower is better. We report MAE for every metric.

mmHg Unit

Millimetres of mercury. The unit for blood pressure. UCUM code mm[Hg].

O

OCR Core

Optical Character Recognition. Our medical-device OCR pipeline reads LCD and 7-segment displays on 220+ device models and returns structured fields with per-field confidence.

On-device inference Privacy

Running the ML model directly on the phone, mirror, or embedded device rather than a cloud server. The SmartScanPro SDK does this by default — raw video never leaves the device.

P

Per-field confidence Core

Instead of a single confidence score for a whole document, we return a confidence number for each extracted field (e.g. systolic 0.97, diastolic 0.92, pulse 0.88).

PHI Compliance

Protected Health Information. Any identifiable health data covered by HIPAA. On-device inference in zero-retention mode means no PHI persists server-side.

POS method Algorithm

Plane-Orthogonal-to-Skin (Wang et al., 2017). An rPPG algorithm that projects pixel color onto a plane orthogonal to the skin-tone axis, which improves robustness to motion.

Pulse oximeter Device

A small clip-on device that shines light through a finger or earlobe and measures blood oxygen saturation (SpO₂) and pulse. Our OCR pipeline reads any 7-segment or LCD oximeter display from a photo.

R

Respiratory rate Vital

Breaths per minute. We derive it from a 30-second face scan by measuring subtle respiratory-induced motion and variation in the pulse envelope.

RMSSD Stats

Root Mean Square of Successive Differences. A time-domain HRV metric sensitive to parasympathetic (vagal) activity. Usually 20–50 ms in healthy adults at rest.

rPPG Core

Remote Photoplethysmography. Measuring a pulse signal from subtle color changes in the skin of someone's face using a regular camera — no contact, no sensor.

RPM Domain

Remote Patient Monitoring. A care model where a patient uses at-home devices and apps; data flows to a clinician who reviews asynchronously and bills against CPT 99453–99458.

S

SDNN Stats

Standard Deviation of NN intervals. A time-domain HRV metric reflecting overall variability across a recording. Reported alongside RMSSD for a fuller HRV picture.

SNR Signal

Signal-to-Noise Ratio. Drives our confidence score. Poor lighting, motion, or a heavily covered face lowers SNR and widens our returned uncertainty bands.

SpO₂ Vital

Peripheral oxygen saturation. The percentage of hemoglobin carrying oxygen. Normal at sea level is 95–100%. We estimate it from rPPG and report it with a ±1.6% MAE.

T

Telehealth Domain

The provision of healthcare services remotely via video, phone, or messaging. SmartScanPro adds contactless vitals to a telehealth visit without new hardware.

TFLite Runtime

TensorFlow Lite. The on-device model runtime we use on Android (alongside NNAPI and GPU delegates) to keep latency sub-second on mid-range phones.

V

Vital sign Clinical

A clinical measurement of a basic body function: heart rate, respiratory rate, body temperature, blood pressure, and SpO₂. We return all five from a single face scan.

Vascular age Wellness

An estimate of arterial "age" from pulse-wave shape. Higher vascular age relative to chronological age correlates with cardiovascular risk factors.

W

WASM Runtime

WebAssembly. The binary format our web SDK ships in so that rPPG inference runs at near-native speed directly in the browser, with no server round-trip for raw video.

Webhook API

An HTTP POST we send to a URL you control when an event fires — e.g. a scan completes or an OCR document finishes processing. Secured with an HMAC signature.

Wellness BP Vital

A blood-pressure estimate computed from the face scan. Suitable for wellness and screening contexts, not diagnosis. Customers who need clinical BP use our medical-device OCR on a cuff reading.

Z

Zero-retention mode Privacy

An account setting that disables all server-side storage of request and response bodies. We process the request, return the result, and drop it. Audit logs retain only metadata.

Missing a term?

Email docs@smartscanpro.ai and we'll add it — credited to you if you like. We update this page monthly.