The present invention relates to a device and a method for extracting physiological information from remotely detected electromagnetic radiation (14) emitted or reflected by a subject. A data stream (24) derived from detected electromagnetic radiation (14) is received, the data stream (24) comprising a sequence of signal samples representing a region of interest (58) exhibiting a continuous or discrete characteristic signal including physiological information indicative of at least one at least partially periodic vital signal (20), and being comprised of at least two wavelength components. The device further comprises a transforming unit for providing coefficient components from the at least two wavelength components and a coefficient selection unit for selecting the coefficient component which is used for calculating the desired signal component used for determining the physiological information.