Effect of subjective health conditions on facial skin temperature distribution: a 1-year statistical analysis among four participants

• Published in: Artificial life and robotics Vol. 29; no. 3; pp. 381 - 388
• Main Authors: Takano, Masahito, Oiwa, Kosuke, Nozawa, Akio
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Tokyo Springer Japan 01.08.2024; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Anomalies; Artificial Intelligence; Computation by Abstract Devices; Computer Science; Control; Image acquisition; Mechatronics; Original Article; Physiological effects; Remote monitoring; Robotics; Skewed distributions; Skin temperature; Spatial distribution; Statistical analysis; Temperature distribution; Thermal infrared imaging; Thermal face image; Facial skin temperature; Human health monitoring; Subjective health condition
• ISSN: 1433-5298; 1614-7456
• DOI: 10.1007/s10015-024-00953-8

Thermal skin images are used to evaluate the physiological and psychological states of patients. To implement remote daily health monitoring, we attempted to assess subjective health conditions using thermal face images. In our previous study, we constructed an anomaly detection model to detect poor health conditions; the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve of the anomaly-detection model was 0.70. However, how the spatial distribution of facial skin temperature changes in response to subjective health conditions remains unclear. In this study, we statistically analyzed the acquired thermal face images to investigate the effect of subjective health conditions on facial skin temperature distribution. As a result of the comparison between health conditions, we confirmed that typically the average temperatures and left-right asymmetry in some regions of the face were significantly higher in poor health conditions than in good health conditions.