Thermal Infrared Imaging to Evaluate Emotional Competences in Nursing Students: A First Approach through a Case Study

Abstract

During university studies of nursing, it is important to develop emotional skills for their impact on academic performance and the quality of patient care. Thermography is a technology that could be applied during nursing training to evaluate emotional skills. The objective is to evaluate the effect of thermography as the tool for monitoring and improving emotional skills in student nurses through a case study. The student was subjected to different emotions. The stimuli applied were video and music. The process consisted of measuring the facial temperatures during each emotion and stimulus in three phases: acclimatization, stimulus, and response. Thermographic data acquisition was performed with an FLIR E6 camera. The analysis was complemented with the environmental data (temperature and humidity). With the video stimulus, the start and final forehead temperature from testing phases, showed a different behavior between the positive (joy: 34.5 °C–34.5 °C) and negative (anger: 36.1 °C–35.1 °C) emotions during the acclimatization phase, different from the increase experienced in the stimulus (joy: 34.7 °C–35.0 °C and anger: 35.0 °C–35.0 °C) and response phases (joy: 35.0 °C–35.0 °C and anger: 34.8 °C–35.0 °C). With the music stimulus, the emotions showed different patterns in each phase (joy: 34.2 °C–33.9 °C–33.4 °C and anger: 33.8 °C–33.4 °C–33.8 °C). Whenever the subject is exposed to a stimulus, there is a thermal bodily response. All of the facial areas follow a common thermal pattern in response to the stimulus, with the exception of the nose. Thermography is a technique suitable for the stimulation practices in emotional skills, given that it is non-invasive, it is quantifiable, and easy to access.

Facial thermal and blood perfusion patterns of human emotions: Proof-of-Concept

“…The average values of temperature and blood perfusion were calculated for every emotion. The ROIs analyzed were the nose, forehead, eyes, upper lip region, and total face evaluation, according to the recommendations of previous works [14], [16], [17]. For the quantitative analysis of the results, the absolute and percentage differences between the negative valence-baseline and positive valence-baseline images for temperature and blood perfusion were calculated.…”

“…Previous works [14], [16], [17] have shown that analyzing several points in the face, such as the cheeks, periorbital region, upper lip region, and forehead, can allow one to identify the type of Accepted Version -Journal of Thermal Biology, december 2022. The publisher version can be found with the DOI: 10.1016/j.jtherbio.2023.103464 emotion defined in the modular approach by analyzing if there is an increase or decrease in temperature in those regions.…”

Design of a Didactical Activity for the Analysis of Uncertainties in Thermography through the Use of Robust Statistics as Teacher-Oriented Approach

“…The International Vocabulary of Metrology (VIM) [40], defines the systematic measurement error as the part of the measurement error that remains constant or varies predictably A specific workflow is used to display the results, which converts the thermograms into 3D viewable models, but with a unique feature: the third axis does not actually represent the elevation, depth, or any metric value, but the temperature of the object surface [41]. This method has been used with success in the subjects of health sciences degrees for blood flow monitoring and also for emotions [42].…”

Thermography for Emotion Recognition Using Deep Learning in Academic Settings: A Review

“…Recently, several computer-based methods have been developed to recognize facial expression through thermograms [25][22] [26][27] [28][29] [30][31] [32]. Previous research shows that feature learning is still performed manually and not specifically designed for the education sector.…”