Affective Man-Machine Interface: Unveiling human emotions through biosignals

As is known for centuries, humans exhibit an electrical profile. This profile is altered through various psychological and physiological processes, which can be measured through biosignals; e.g., electromyography (EMG) and electrodermal activity (EDA). These biosignals can reveal our emotions and, as such, can serve as an advanced man-machine interface (MMI) for empathic consumer products. However, such a MMI requires the correct classification of biosignals to emotion classes. This chapter starts with an introduction on biosignals for emotion detection. Next, a state-of-the-art review is presented on automatic emotion classification. Moreover, guidelines are presented for affective MMI. Subsequently, a research is presented that explores the use of EDA and three facial EMG signals to determine neutral, positive, negative, and mixed emotions, using recordings of 21 people. A range of techniques is tested, which resulted in a generic framework for automated emotion classification with up to 61.31% correct classification of the four emotion classes, without the need of personal profiles. Among various other directives for future research, the results emphasize the need for parallel processing of multiple biosignals

Biosignals as an Advanced Man-Machine Interface

As is known for centuries, humans exhibit an electrical profile. This profile is altered through various physiological processes, which can be measured through biosignals; e.g., electromyography (EMG) and electrodermal activity (EDA). These biosignals can reveal our emotions and, as such, can serve as an advanced man-machine interface (MMI) for empathic consumer products. However, such an MMI requires the correct classification of biosignals to emotion classes. This paper explores the use of EDA and three facial EMG signals to determine neutral, positive, negative, and mixed emotions, using recordings of 24 people. A range of techniques is tested, which resulted in a generic framework for automated emotion classification with up to 61.31% correct classification of the four emotion classes, without the need of personal profiles. Among various other directives for future research, the results emphasize the need for both personalized biosignal-profiles and the recording of multiple biosignals in parallel

Prerequisites for Affective Signal Processing (ASP) - Part III

This is the third part in a series on prerequisites for affective signal processing (ASP). So far, six prerequisites were identified: validation (e.g., mapping of constructs on signals), triangulation, a physiology-driven approach, and contributions of the signal processing community (van den Broek et al., 2009) and identification of users and theoretical specification (van den Broek et al., 2010). Here, two additional prerequisites are identified: integration of biosignals, and physical characteristics

Biosignal and context monitoring: Distributed multimedia applications of body area networks in healthcare

We are investigating the use of Body Area Networks (BANs), wearable sensors and wireless communications for measuring, processing, transmission, interpretation and display of biosignals. The goal is to provide telemonitoring and teletreatment services for patients. The remote health professional can view a multimedia display which includes graphical and numerical representation of patients’ biosignals. Addition of feedback-control enables teletreatment services; teletreatment can be delivered to the patient via multiple modalities including tactile, text, auditory and visual. We describe the health BAN and a generic mobile health service platform and two context aware applications. The epilepsy application illustrates processing and interpretation of multi-source, multimedia BAN data. The chronic pain application illustrates multi-modal feedback and treatment, with patients able to view their own biosignals on their handheld device

Biosignal Generation and Latent Variable Analysis with Recurrent Generative Adversarial Networks

The effectiveness of biosignal generation and data augmentation with biosignal generative models based on generative adversarial networks (GANs), which are a type of deep learning technique, was demonstrated in our previous paper. GAN-based generative models only learn the projection between a random distribution as input data and the distribution of training data.Therefore, the relationship between input and generated data is unclear, and the characteristics of the data generated from this model cannot be controlled. This study proposes a method for generating time-series data based on GANs and explores their ability to generate biosignals with certain classes and characteristics. Moreover, in the proposed method, latent variables are analyzed using canonical correlation analysis (CCA) to represent the relationship between input and generated data as canonical loadings. Using these loadings, we can control the characteristics of the data generated by the proposed method. The influence of class labels on generated data is analyzed by feeding the data interpolated between two class labels into the generator of the proposed GANs. The CCA of the latent variables is shown to be an effective method of controlling the generated data characteristics. We are able to model the distribution of the time-series data without requiring domain-dependent knowledge using the proposed method. Furthermore, it is possible to control the characteristics of these data by analyzing the model trained using the proposed method. To the best of our knowledge, this work is the first to generate biosignals using GANs while controlling the characteristics of the generated data

Prerequisites for Affective Signal Processing (ASP) - Part V: A response to comments and suggestions

In four papers, a set of eleven prerequisites for affective signal processing (ASP) were identified (van den Broek et al., 2010): validation, triangulation, a physiology-driven approach, contributions of the signal processing community, identification of users, theoretical specification, integration of biosignals, physical characteristics, historical perspective, temporal construction, and real-world baselines. Additionally, a review (in two parts) of affective computing was provided. Initiated by the reactions on these four papers, we now present: i) an extension of the review, ii) a post-hoc analysis based on the eleven prerequisites of Picard et al.(2001), and iii) a more detailed discussion and illustrations of temporal aspects with ASP

3G networks in emergency telemedicine - An in-depth evaluation & analysis

The evolution of telecommunications technologies in connection with the robustness and the fidelity these new systems provide, have opened up many new horizons as regards the provision of healthcare and the quality of service from the side of the experts to that of the patients. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the third generation telecommunications systems that are only recently being deployed in Europe, as well as argue on why a transition from 2G and 2.5G to 3G telecommunications systems could prove to be crucial, especially in relation to emergency telemedicine. The experimental results of the use of these systems are analyzed, the implementation of a tele-consultation unit is presented and their exploitation capabilities are explored

Compression via Compressive Sensing : A Low-Power Framework for the Telemonitoring of Multi-Channel Physiological Signals

Telehealth and wearable equipment can deliver personal healthcare and necessary treatment remotely. One major challenge is transmitting large amount of biosignals through wireless networks. The limited battery life calls for low-power data compressors. Compressive Sensing (CS) has proved to be a low-power compressor. In this study, we apply CS on the compression of multichannel biosignals. We firstly develop an efficient CS algorithm from the Block Sparse Bayesian Learning (BSBL) framework. It is based on a combination of the block sparse model and multiple measurement vector model. Experiments on real-life Fetal ECGs showed that the proposed algorithm has high fidelity and efficiency. Implemented in hardware, the proposed algorithm was compared to a Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT) based algorithm, verifying the proposed one has low power consumption and occupies less computational resources.Comment: 2013 International Workshop on Biomedical and Health Informatic