Automatic blush detection in ‘concealed information’ test using visual stimuli

Blushing has been identified as an indicator of deception, shame, anxiety and embarrassment. Although normally associated with the skin coloration of the face, a blush response also affects skin surface temperature. In this paper, an approach to detect a blush response automatically is presented using the Argus P7225 thermal camera from e2v. The algorithm was tested on a sample population of 51 subjects, while using visual stimuli to elicit a response, and achieved recognition rates of ~77% TPR and ~60% TNR, indicating a thermal image sensor is the prospective device to pick up subtle temperature change synchronised with stimuli

A non-invasive method for measuring blood flow rate in superficial veins from a single thermal image.

Computer vision is a field that includes methods for processing, analyzing, acquiring and understanding images to produce numerical or symbolic information to develop methodologies and solutions for many problems in many fields. Here the concept of computer vision is being used for understanding certain human physiology and behaviors using thermal imaging alone or in conjunction with other imaging modalities. The applications of this work span a wide range of studies in human-machine interfacing vis-à-vis feedback controls that can be used to remotely determine whether a patient is in need of medical assistance or to help integrate young children with learning challenges into a public classroom setting that can require monitoring vital signs and physiological cues without the need for contact-based sensors such as electrocardiogram (ECG) or electroencephalogram (EEG), which limit a subject’s physical capabilities during operational scenarios. In this thesis, a general framework is proposed to find an easy way to measure the blood flow using thermal camera to help detecting cots and vascular diseases (Venous disease, Arterial disease). In this thesis, a general framework is proposed to use a thermal image based measurement technique for the volumetric flow rate of a liquid inside a thin tube. This technique makes use of the convection heat transfer dependency between the flow rate and the temperature of the flowing liquid along the tube. The proposed method can be applied to diagnose superficial venous disease non-invasively by measuring the volumetric blood flow rate from a FLIR LWIR single thermal image (Mahmoud et al., 13)

A probabilistic template update method for tracking facial tissue in thermal infrared

A novel template update method is proposed for facial tissue tracking in thermal clips. It is a smoothed matte ap- proach, which provides the location along with the rate of updating. The template is able to adapt to abrupt orienta- tion and physiological changes, while remaining robust to noise disturbances. Furthermore, it addresses successfully the difficult template drift problem. The new method was tested on tracking face regions in 40 thermal clips of in- dividuals in varying psycho-physiological and environmen- tal conditions. It demonstrated stability and accuracy, out- performing other template update strategies. The method promises improved performance in contact-free polygraphy and thus, it is of value in this emerging form of close range surveillance