Real-time monitoring of behavioural parameters related to psychological stress.

We have developed a system, allowing real-time monitoring of human gestures, which can be used for the automatic recognition of behavioural correlates of psychological stress. The system is based on a low-cost camera (Microsoft Kinect), which provides video recordings capturing the subject's upper body activity. Motion History Images (MHIs) are calculated in real-time from these recordings. Appropriate algorithms are thereafter applied over the MHIs, enabling the real-time calculation of activity-related behavioural parameters. The system's efficiency in real-time calculation of behavioural parameters has been tested in a pilot trial, involving monitoring of behavioural parameters during the induction of mental stress. Results showed that our prototype is capable to effectively calculate simultaneously eight different behavioural parameters in real-time. Statistical analysis indicated significant correlations between five of these parameters and self-reported stress. The preliminary findings suggest that our approach could potentially prove useful within systems targeting automatic stress detection, through unobtrusive monitoring of subjects.