Previous | 
Home
Section: Partnerships and Cooperations
International Initiatives
International Initiatives
-
Title: Facial expression recognition with application in health monitoring
-
International Partner (Institution - Laboratory - Researcher):
-
See also: https://project.inria.fr/fer4hm/
-
The proposed research aims to provide computer vision methods for facial expression recognition in patients with Alzheimer’s disease. Most importantly though, the work seeks to be part of a paradigm shift in current healthcare, in efficiently and cost effectively finding objective measures to (a) assess different therapy treatments, as well as to (b) enable automated human-computer interaction in remote large-scale healthcare- frameworks. Recognizing expressions in severely demented Alzheimer's disease (AD) patients is essential, since such patients have lost a substantial amount of their cognitive capacity [1-3], and some even their verbal communication ability (e.g., aphasia)2. This leaves patients dependent on clinical staff to assess their verbal and non-verbal language, in order to communicate important messages, as of discomfort associated to potential complications of the AD [9, 10]. Such assessment classically requires the patients' presence in a clinic, and time consuming examination involving medical personnel. Thus, expression monitoring is costly and logistically inconvenient for patients and clinical staff, which hinders among others large-scale monitoring. Approaches need to cater to the challenging settings of current medical recordings, which include continuous pose variations, occlusions, camera-movements, camera-artifacts, as well as changing illumination. Additionally and importantly, the (elderly) patients exhibit generally less profound facial activities and expressions in a range of intensities and predominantly occurring in combinations (e.g., talking and smiling). Both, Inria-STARS and CAS-ICT have already initiated research activities related to the here proposed topic. While both sides have studied facial expression recognition, CAS-ICT has explored additionally the use of heart rate monitoring sensed from a webcam in this context.
-
International Partner (Institution - Laboratory - Researcher):
-
SafEE (Safe Easy Environment) investigates technologies for the evaluation, stimulation and intervention for Alzheimer patients. The SafEE project aims at improving the safety, autonomy and quality of life of older people at risk or suffering from Alzheimer's disease and related disorders. More specifically the SafEE project : 1) focuses on specific clinical targets in three domains: behavior, motricity and cognition 2) merges assessment and non pharmacological help/intervention and 3) proposes easy ICT device solutions for the end users. In this project, experimental studies will be conducted both in France (at Hospital and Nursery Home) and in Taiwan.