Review on Stress Monitoring and Detection

1
Mahesh S. Patil,2Dr. Yogesh Kumar Sharma,3Dr. Parul S. Arora
1
Research Scholar,2Professor, 3Associate Professor
12
Department of ECE JJT University, Jhunjhunu, Rajasthan
3
Department of E&TC, ICOER, Pune, India

Abstract: Stress is psychological and physiological imbalance in the state of body or mind due to physical, mental or emotional
factors. Indeed, stress affects the human body, thoughts, feeling and behavior. Being able to recognize stress symptoms can give a
jump on its analysis and remedies. Human Biofield called as “Aura” can be an important parameter to recognize stress at different
frequency levels. Aura detection has got an historical background to identify many personal traits. In this study we have focused on
stress detection using Human biofield i.e. “Aura”. thus, it can be very helpful for people to overcome the stress and its related
problems. This paper reviews about the different technological advancement occurred in stress monitoring and its detection in recent
years.

Index Terms - Stress Monitoring, Stress Detection, Physiological sensor, Human Biofield, Human Aura.

I. INTRODUCTION
Stress is nothing but psychological and physiological imbalance which occurs into the body due to the physical, mental or
emotional factors. This stress is our bodies response to certain situations of life. It is a subjective which means a condition which is
stressful for a person may or may not be stressful to other people. Stress can affect a person’s mental and physical health. Your body
responds to stress by producing chemicals and hormones to help person rise to the challenge or to meet deadlines. It is a pressure
situation where persons heart rate increases, brain works faster, and person may have a sudden burst of energy. This kind of response
by body is basic and natural. But when body is exposed continuously to such type of pressure situations which create lot of health
problems in one’s life. The problems can vary from simple headache to even death. It’s almost impossible to remove this kind of
stress but it is possible to overcome it by detecting and continuously monitoring it. The main aim of stress monitoring is to identify
stressors and provide a remedy to reduce or overcome the stress.
There are three types of stress. They are acute stress, Episodic acute stress and chronic stress. Acute stress is the most common
form of stress. It is our bodies immediate reaction to new challenges, demands or events. Isolated doses of acute stresses are good
for person’s well-being as it let person becomes strong and ready for any new kind of problems in his life. It is healthy. Sever and
continuous attacks of acute stress leads to mental health problems. When acute stress happens repeatedly it is called as episodic acute
stress. The continuous and repeated situation facing people go through this kind of stress. People who are always in hurry or worry
kind people or pessimistic or who always see negative side of everything undergoes episodic acute stress. They are anxious, irritable
and short tempered. It is very difficult to change the lifestyle of such type of people as they take this type of stress as part of their life
style. The longer duration of acute stress which is not resolved comes into the category of chronic stress. This type of stress is constant
and it cannot go away form person. This type of stress contributes to severe health problems which may include cancer, lung disease,
accidents and even suicides.
The pressures situations and requirements of modern life are putting our body in a heightened state for a long period of time,
making our heart pump hard, fast and our blood vessels constrict for longer than our body can handle. Over a period of time, these
physiological demands can take a toll on your body. If the stress is lasting for longer amount of time following physical or
psychological changes happens in the body. Difficulty concentrating, Headaches, other aches and pains, Anxiety, Anger, Low self-
esteem, lack of confidence, irritability, Depression, Sleep, feeling moody, tearful disturbance, insomnia, Fatigue, feeling
overwhelmed and out of control, upset stomach, indigestion, diarrhoea, Weakened immune system, High blood pressure, Heart
disease.
The simplest method to deal with simple and non-lasting stress situations is to identifying the warning signs, identifying triggers,
establishing the daily routine, practicing meditation and relaxation, spending time with loved ones. Due to the modern busy lifestyle
and target oriented approach in day today life people don’t realize they are under tremendous pressure and stress. So, it becomes very
difficult and challenging task for people who are giving treatment to such kind of people who are under heavy stress. The main aim
of this paper is to review the technological advancements advancement which are taking place in recent times in the field of stress
monitoring, stress detection and stress reduction.

II. Literature Review

Over the last few years researchers have worked hard to monitor stress and provide a suitable means to reduce the problems of
health arising from the high stress situations. They have used different sensors for the measurement of stress which are wearable
on body parts [1][3][6][7][8] [11] [12]. Along with this few researchers have also worked on to provide sociometric data collected
from mobile phone or portable system [2][4][5] [10].
B. Padmaja et al. [1] worked on a method for detection of cognitive stress levels using FITBIT activity tracker device. They
have incorporated machine learning approach along with sensor technology for detection of stress. For the experiment purpose 10
users from IT industry participated in the experimentation. The study took place for period of 10 months. The age of the participant
was from 28 to 45 years. Each participant was having FITBIT watch and app. The data was collected from individuals on monthly
basis. The perceived stress scale (PSS) was used to measure the stress. Result of the study shows that body mass index (BMI) is
significant positive indicator of stress. The following diagram shows the overall representation of method in block form.
 Fig 2.1 steps followed in stress detection process as in [1]
Bogomolov et al. [2] collected mobile phone activity (i.e. call log, SMS log, Bluetooth interactions) of 117 subjects to
recognize stress during common daily activities. They applied different classifiers: SVM, artificial neural networks, ensemble of
tree classifiers based on a Breiman's Random Forest (RF) and Friedmans Generalized Boosted Model (GBM). The subjects were
analyzed for more than 8 weeks. Each participant was given the smartphone and a software specially designed for data collection.
The data collected consists of SMS logs, call logs and social proximity data. For the analysis paper they have collected data of
22587 SMS, 33497 phone calls and 1460939 Bluetooth hits. The participants are told to fill daily self-stress information report
along with 1-7 scale. Online version of big five questionnaire was asked to participant to get the details of individual participant
personality. The result clearly indicates that daily stress monitoring is possible with the help of mobile phone data.
Basel Kikhia et al [3] has worked on method to measure the level of stress of the people with dementia. For this purpose, they
have used wristband sensor. They have conducted their study in two nursing homes in Sweden. The study involved 30 trained staff
members and 6 participants with dementia. The participants were diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. They were recruited to take
part in the data collection based on their Behavioral and Psychological Symptoms of Dementia (BPSD) problems which includes
agitation, disturbance by other residents, sleeping problems, anxiety, difficulty with orientation, and wandering. The figure below
shows wristband sensor used.

Fig. 2.2 Philips DTI-2 wristband sensor used by Basel Kikhia et al [3]
The number of different parameters collected by the wristband sensor includes GSR (skin conductance), accelerometers (for
capturing motion), skin temperature, environment temperature and environment light. The sensor was with the subjects for two
months and data is taken from the sensor on weekly basis on then it is processed.
Garcia et al. [4] used accelerometer (ACC) data of a mobile phone to recognize stress in real workplace environments. They
have used thirteen subjects and studied them for 8 weeks using two classification models: naive Bayes and decision trees. They
obtained an accuracy of 71%. To detect stress using different machine learning classifiers such as k- nearest neighbors, SVM with
Radial basis function (RBF) kernel, Support Vector Machine (SVM) with linear kernel, Principal component analysis (PCA) and
SVM with RBF kernel and k-nearest neighbors. They have collected data for five days. Their focus of work is to compare the
performances of algorithms they have implemented. They have used mobile data usage, Accelerometer data and skin conductance
parameters to collect the data from subjects.
 Jesus Minguillon et al. [5] have worked on a portable system for real time detection of stress. For the same they have used
electroencephalography, electrocardiography, electromyography, and galvanic skin response type of bio signals. They have tested
10 subjects under stress and relaxed condition while responses were recorded in the both conditions. The result shows that 86% of
accuracy of classifying the stress in different types.
Kocielnik et al. [6] discussed a framework to detect stress in the context of a person's activities. They use a min-max algorithm
and Accelerometer (ACC) as source data. Three different methods have been used to collect the data from participants. Sensor
measurements from wrist band DTI-2, for collecting daily activities they have used calendar application and questionnaire for
collecting subjective feedback. 10 users were using DTI-2 wrist band in the working hours for almost a period 28 days. The user
uploads the data of DTI-2 device once every day. The result of study shows that by using limited number of sensors we can receive
the behavioral patterns of the persons for achieving greater stress balance in their work life.
Mozos et al. [7] has discussed a stress detection method which uses wearing a physiological and sociometric sensors. They
have used wearable sensor which provides real time physiological responses such as electrodermal activity and
photoplethysmogram. In addition to this they have also used sociometric badge that can be used to measure the social activity
which includes body movement and voice of the subjects. Trier Social Stress Test (TSST) was used to discriminate between
stressful and neutral situations which were obtained from measurements from both sensors are processed and used as input to
different classifiers that were trained. They have used binary classifiers. They have not differentiated different levels of stresses.
the results of the experiments show that the combination of physiological and activity measurements can discriminate between
stressful and neutral situations on people while engaging across several activities. There were 18 participant who were student aged
between 18 to 39 including male and females. For detection of stress in social situations, Mozos et al. combined machine learning
techniques using EDA, heart rate variability (HRV) and Photoplethysmogram (PPG) signals. They used Trier social stress test
(TSST) for detecting a situation to be stressful or not. The result of accuracy obtained by them is 89.75% with precision of 89.5%.
Nelly Condori-Fernández et al. [8] has discussed method of automatic stress detection. They have used environment as office
work places. They discussed this for real time automatic stress detection. They have used stress suitable for real-time processing
following an arousal-based statistical approach. They have gathered physiological data buy using E-4 wristband which works on
electrodermal activity (EDA). By exposing users to different emotional triggers in the quite office workplace environment they
have conducted experiment to analyze the output of stress detector. 12 subjects were participated voluntarily in this experiment.
There ages ranging from 21-32 years out of 12 subjects seven were female and five males. The accuracy of the result was 79.13%,
a precision of 60% and a recall of 50%. The diagrammatic representation of the method used by author is given below.

Fig. 2.3 Automatic Stress detection reported by [8]

Rubik et al [9] had given the scientific analysis of the human aura. The have used Kirlian photography method along with
software analysis. digital form of Kirlian photography, called GDV, or “gas discharge visualization” technique along with the
Mandel knowledge base and others in software program were used to find out the empirical output of the Human biofield of Aura.
The GDV camera is using very high frequency and high voltage input to the object we need to be photographed. The object is
exposed only for 0.5 second and applied electric field is pulsed on and off every 10 microseconds. A charge coupled detector
(CCD) detects light emitted from the objects and are capable of detecting extremely low level of light. A computer is connected to
CCD which takes signals from the CCD and then software analysis is done to find out different parameters for analysis.
S. Venkateshwaran et al. [10] has built a practical application where users data from social networking site such as Facebook
is collected and analyzed for measurement of stress. By analyzing users stress states from analyzed data the system recommends
user different links to release their stress. Here the user has to register first on a stress analysis system. Then the stress analysis
system starts collecting data from Facebook developer page. Then clustering techniques are applied on different users’ posts. They
have used different classification algorithms for classify data. From the classification the users are provided with their stress states.
Tian Hao et al. [11] discussed stress hacker a smart watch-based approach to monitor the stress. The designed system
continuously and passively monitors the stress levels. They have used 12 subjects out of which 8 were females and 4 were males.
The participated subjects were volunteers from well known organization an all were adults. They have collected data of 12 subjects
for 29 days and around 300 hours of data is collected from the subjects. From 3.78 hours to 46.6 hours was the duration of recording
range. The device continuously records the pulse wave signal from photoplethysmography (PPG), heart rate sensor, and
acceleration from accelerometer along with their timestamps. To calculate HRV-based features the data collected from PPG sensor
was used. The result of the experiment shows the correlation between subject reported stress information and stress hackers’ output.
The result shows that precision obtained is 86.1% and recall percentage of 91.2%.
Vanitha et al. [12] has worked on a method of stress detection which uses low cost heart rate sensors. They used non-invasive,
precise, accurate and reliable sensor which is Electroencephalography (EEG). The experimentation is done on 6 healthy subjects
without the history of neuro problems. Then a wireless EEG device is place on subjects’ different parts of body as per standards.
The subjects were given different questions with variable difficulty level and the EEG signal is recorded for the same. The acquired
EEG signals were processed at 512 Hz and impedance was kept as low as 7 kΩ. MATLAB 8.4 is used as software implementation
tool for the processing of the signal and analysis purpose. The received EEG signal is then pre-processed to remove the noise
present n the signal and then adaptive feature extraction is done by using Hilbert Huang Transform (HHT). After this classification
is done using support vector machine (SVM). The evaluation of the performance of the system is done by using classification
accuracy and overall performance. The accuracy of the SVM classifier is 89.07% and is highest in comparison with other mentioned
classifiers.
The following table shows the comparison of measure work happened in the area of stress monitoring and detection over the
last few years and which is commonly reported.
Table 2.1 Comparison of Review of the literature in recent years
Author Year Algorithm for Source of Data Tools used Remark
Classification

Bogomolov et 2014 SVM, ANNs, tree Mobile phone Accuracy: - Common daily
al. [2] classifiers based on RF and activity 72.93% activities.
GBM.

Kocielnik et al. 2013 Min-max algorithm. Accelerometer Not reported Subject's

[6] (ACC) activities.

Mozos et 2017 SVM, AdaBoost, and k- EDA, PPG and Accuracy: - Social situations
nearest neighbor. HRV. 89.75% using the TSST.
al. [7]

Garcia-Ceja et 2016 Naive Bayes and decision Accelerometer Accuracy: - Real working
al. [4] trees. (ACC) 71% environments.

Vanitha et al. 2016 SVM, HHT EEG Accuracy: - Low cost heart rate
[12] 89.07% sensors

Tian Hao et al. 2017 photoplethysmography Stress hacker smart Precision: - Daily routine
[11] (PPG), heart rate sensor, and watch 86.1%, recall: -
acceleration from 91.2%
accelerometer

III. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

From the above review it is clear that researchers have majorly used the contact types of sensor or wearable type of sensors. The
results depicted pretty good amount of accuracy obtained in major of the literature. They have also used sociometric types of sensor
in their study. The literature lacks the use of contactless sensor which can be used to measure the stress levels of a person for the
monitoring and detection purpose. Not much work is reported in the literature in this area as compared to the wearable sensors and
sociometric sensors. Our work will be on use of human biofield AURA for stress monitoring.

IV. ACKNOWLEDGMENT
I would like to thank Dr. Yogesh Kumar Sharma my guide and Dr. Parul S. Arora Co-guide for providing me valuable guidance
from time to time. I would also like to thank authors who have helped me directly or indirectly.

REFERENCES
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350
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