Workshop on facial recognition for pain assessment

1 October 2018
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Mentech Innovation and Severinus have given a workshop on pain assessment at the Dutch congress “Verstandelijk én ernstig meervoudig beperkt: klein kijken, veel zien“. We have presented a method for pain assessment using facial recognition.

Pain assessment in non-communicating people with a severe mental disability or dementia is sometimes difficult because of their lacking ability to verbally express pain. Pain observation or measurement scales are often used to assess pain. However sometimes they give inaccurate results because the caregivers cannot always properly interpret subtle signs and clients behavior. In these cases, pain may remain unidentified. Physiological changes, such as breathing, skin color, skin conductance, heart rate but also facial expressions, behavioral changes and body posture are common indicators of pain that can support the assessment of pain.

During a workshop on pain assessment at the Dutch congress “Verstandelijk én ernstig meervoudig beperkt: klein kijken, veel zien”, on September 28th 2018 in Ede, Linda Weijer from Severinus and Clement Atlan from Mentech Innovation have demonstrated the capability of real-time face recognition to support pain assessment. Mentech Innovation is working towards a face recognition and body posture toolkit. This toolkit will complement the EmoKit for pain assessment in care houses.