Interacting with human physiology

Summary:

The authors Pavlidis et al. propose a system to monitor humans for stress levels and altered psychological states using high-end infrared cameras. This system could then be used for a variety of purposes such as stress management of UIs, illness detection, or lie detection.

The system tracks the user's face through tandem tracking to track a small, keys section of the face. These sections include the nose, forehead, and temporal regions. The tracker models each region by its center of mass and orientation. Blood flow is tracked in the face through a perfusion model and directional model. The model involves a differential equation set to measure the "volumetric metabolic heat" flow in the face. Other measurements tracked include pulse, heat transfer in areas, and breathing rate.


Discussion:

The ideas behind this system are great, although talking with Pavlidis showed us that there are issues with the current system's usability. Sweat and minor body temperature fluctuations can alter the system's reliability (since the system is trying to measure minor fluctuations). Unfortunately, the cost for one of these high-end cameras is $60k, so we won't be seeing this any time soon.