Detecting Happiness Using Hyperspectral Imaging Technology

Abstract

Hyperspectral imaging (HSI) technology can be used to detect human emotions based on the power of material discrimination from their faces. In this paper, HSI is used to remotely sense and distinguish blood chromophores in facial tissues and acquire an evaluation indicator (tissue oxygen saturation, StO ₂) using an optical absorption model. This study explored facial analysis while people were showing spontaneous expressions of happiness during social interaction. Happiness, as a psychological emotion, has been shown to be strongly linked to other activities such as physiological reaction and facial expression. Moreover, facial expression as a communicative motor behavior likely arises from musculoskeletal anatomy, neuromuscular activity, and individual personality. This paper quantified the neuromotor movements of tissues surrounding some regions of interest (ROIs) on smiling happily. Next, we selected six regions—the forehead, eye, nose, cheek, mouth, and chin—according to a facial action coding system (FACS). Nineteen segments were subsequently partitioned from the above ROIs. The affective data (StO ₂) of 23 young adults were acquired by HSI while the participants expressed emotions (calm or happy), and these were used to compare the significant differences in the variations of StO ₂ between the different ROIs through repeated measures analysis of variance. Results demonstrate that happiness causes different distributions in the variations of StO ₂ for the above ROIs; these are explained in depth in the article. This study establishes that facial tissue oxygen saturation is a valid and reliable physiological indicator of happiness and merits further research.