Cited by 355Face recognition and analysisEmotion and Mood RecognitionFace and Expression Recognition

The painful face – Pain expression recognition using active appearance models

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Ashraf, Ahmed Bilal, Lucey, Simon, Cohn, Jeffrey F., Chen, Tsuhan, Ambadar, Zara, Prkachin, Kenneth M., Solomon, Patricia E.·2009·Image and Vision Computing

Abstract

Pain is typically assessed by patient self-report. Self-reported pain, however, is difficult to interpret and may be impaired or in some circumstances (i.e., young children and the severely ill) not even possible. To circumvent these problems behavioral scientists have identified reliable and valid facial indicators of pain. Hitherto, these methods have required manual measurement by highly skilled human observers. In this paper we explore an approach for automatically recognizing acute pain without the need for human observers. Specifically, our study was restricted to automatically detecting pain in adult patients with rotator cuff injuries. The system employed video input of the patients as they moved their affected and unaffected shoulder. Two types of ground truth were considered. Sequence-level ground truth consisted of Likert-type ratings by skilled observers. Frame-level ground truth was calculated from presence/absence and intensity of facial actions previously associated with pain. Active appearance models (AAM) were used to decouple shape and appearance in the digitized face images. Support vector machines (SVM) were compared for several representations from the AAM and of ground truth of varying granularity. We explored two questions pertinent to the construction, design and development of automatic pain detection systems. First, at what level (i.e., sequence- or frame-level) should datasets be labeled in order to obtain satisfactory automatic pain detection performance? Second, how important is it, at both levels of labeling, that we non-rigidly register the face?

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Crossref · 10.1016/j.imavis.2009.05.007

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Research works printed but not linked: 3

  1. [3]Ashraf AB Lucey S Cohn J Chen T Ambadar Z Prkachin K Solomon P The Painfule Face – Pain expression recognition using active appearance models Proceedings of the 9th international conference on Multimodal interfaces (ICMI) 9 14 2007
  2. [9]Cornelius RR The science of emotion Prentice Hall Upper Saddler River, New Jersey 1996
  3. [13]Ekman P Friesen WV Facial action coding system Consulting Psychologists Press Palo Alto, CA 1978

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Authors
Ashraf, A. B., Lucey, S., Cohn, J. F., Chen, T., Ambadar, Z., Prkachin, K. M., & Solomon, P. E.
Affiliations
University of Pittsburgh (US)
Corresponding author
Cohn, Jeffrey F.
Venue
Image and Vision Computing
Publisher
Elsevier BV
Published
2009-11
Volume
27
Issue
12
Pages
1788-1796
ISSN
0262-8856 (ISSN-L)
OpenAlex
W2090495691
Cited by
355
References
38
Citations by year
2026: 1 · 2025: 9 · 2024: 14 · 2023: 7 · 2022: 11 · 2021: 29 · 2020: 28 · 2019: 31 · 2018: 31 · 2017: 26 · 2016: 33 · 2015: 25 · 2014: 28 · 2013: 20 · 2012: 21
FWCI
21.67
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Locations
  • Image and Vision Computing (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
  • Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (acceptedVersion)
  • PubMed Central (acceptedVersion)
  • National University of Singapore (submittedVersion)
Funders
  • University of Northern British Columbia
  • McMaster University
  • Canadian Institutes of Health Research (MOP77799)
  • National Institute of Mental Health (MH-51435, R01MH051435)
Topics
  • Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition › Face recognition and analysis
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Emotion and Mood Recognition
  • Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition › Face and Expression Recognition
Keywords
active appearance models, rotator cuff injury, facial action units, support vector machine, ground truth annotation, video-based pain assessment

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