Facial Expression Analysis in Mood Assessment
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Analysing Patients’ Facial Expressions to improve Mood Assessment (APFEMA)
IRAS ID
258664
Contact name
Kate Saunders
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Clinical Trials Research Governance, University of Oxford
Duration of Study in the UK
1 years, 3 months, 12 days
Research summary
Measuring mood and depression severity in patients with mood disorders generally depends upon patients' self-report or clinicians' interviews, both of which are susceptible to bias. Recent developments in automated analysis of people's facial expressions offer a less biased marker of mood, which could in the future be offered on personal devices such as smart phones to monitor patients' mood remotely.
This observational study will test markers of mood from automated analysis of participants' own facial expressions, comparing these digital estimates to self-reported mood in patients and healthy controls, and to clinician-rated depression severity in patients.
The study will take just 20 minutes, during which participants will answer questions about their mood, perform an emotion recognition task, and be asked for feedback on the study. During the study, video and audio will be recorded and later used to calculate automated estimates of mood.
This research is relevant to patients with mood disorders, for whom digital estimates of mood will be compared to the same measures from healthy controls. For patients - adults referred to the bipolar disorder (BD) and treatment resistent depression (TRD) clinic - the study will be conducted in the clinic between the usual service assessments. Healthy volunteers will be recruited to participate in the same 20-minute study, but in the Department of Psychiatry.REC name
London - Camden & Kings Cross Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
19/LO/1091
Date of REC Opinion
7 Aug 2019
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion