Extracting Physiological Measurements from Thermal Images

Abstract

Multiple techniques are used to extract physiological signals from the human body. These signals provide a reliable method to identify the physical and mental state of a person at any given point in time. However, these techniques require contact and cooperation of the individual as well as human effort for connecting the devices and collecting the needed measurement. Moreover, these methods can be invasive, timeconsuming, and infeasible in many cases. Recent efforts have been made in order to find alternatives to extract these measurements using noncontact and efficient techniques. One of these alternatives is the use of thermal cameras for health monitoring. Our work explores reliable methods for extracting respiration rate, skin temperature and heart rate from thermal video. These methods leverage a combination of image processing and signal processing techniques in order to extract and filter physiological signals from the thermal domain. Finally, we review the use of thermal imaging in several applications, such as deception detection, stress detection and emotion recognition.