Abstract. In this paper, we proposed a novel approach to monitor the vital signs based webcam for home telemedicine applications. This approach can continuously monitor the vital signs without wearable sensors. It uses the real time video processing algorithm to obtain the instantaneous heart rate(HR) and respiration rate(RR). Furthermore, the heart rate variability (HRV) was analyzed by power spectral density (PSD) estimation using the Lomb periodogram. Experiments in different scenarios were performed to verify the efficacy of the proposed noncontact monitoring vital signs based on webcam. The real time experimental system can be used to measure the instantaneous HR and RR, at the same time the low frequency and high frequency components were extracted. All experimental results show that the proposed concept can be applied to the home telemedicine in the future.