Human Stress Research Using Facial Thermal Imaging

Abstract

Thermal imaging is one of the most promising methods of probing the psychological status of human beings because of its non-invasiveness. The paper focuses mainly on the understanding of fundamental properties of physiological responses to emotional stress and how they can be captured by using thermal imaging techniques. We study the facial image of stressed participants for correlating the thermal imprint and estimated stress marker. While the correlations between the thermal ROI and stress marker (cortisol level & heart beat rate) is not directly significant, facial thermal imprints are sensitive to the emotional stress and have potential to detect stress in real time. Unlike the startle induced instantaneous temperature rise, our experimental results further demonstrate that the temperature in the periorbital region does not increase during the Trier social stress test, but increases after the onset of emotional stress. Overall, the experimental results suggest that facial thermal imaging is a valuable method for the estimation of emotional stress.