Clinical, Medical & Diagnostic Products


Non-Contact Sociologic Research with Thermal Imaging Cameras. FLIR Thermal Imaging Camera Helps Show Maternal Empathy Problem


Christiaan Maras, FLIR Systems, christiaan.maras@flir.com


Researchers that want to study neurovascular elements of human social interaction are often confronted with the limitations of commonly used methods in neuroscience. They often involve the application of electrodes or other contact measurement instruments on the skin of the test subjects, which interferes with spontaneous behaviour. Non-contact methods, such as functional magnetic resonance imaging, involve subjecting test subjects to active radiation and require the test subjects to remain still for extended periods of time.


FLIR Thermal Imaging Camera Helps Show Maternal Empathy Problem


Researchers that want to study neurovascular elements of human social interaction are often confronted with the limitations of commonly used methods in neuroscience. They often involve the application of electrodes or other contact measurement instruments on the skin of the test subjects, which interferes with spontaneous behaviour. Non-contact methods, such as functional magnetic resonance imaging, involve subjecting test subjects to active radiation and require the test subjects to remain still for extended periods of time.


One solution to this problem is the use of thermal imaging technology. It is passive, so thermal imaging cameras record infrared radiation emitted by the subject without submitting them to radiation of any kind. Moreover, this technology allows the researcher to gather information in real time, allowing the test subjects to move naturally. "This technology turns out to be an excellent tool for studying the neurobiological foundations of social interactions, especially in ecological contexts, due to the contact-free nature of thermal imaging", said Dr Arcangelo Merla, Director of the Infrared Imaging Lab at the ITAB – Institute for Advanced Biomedical Technology, University of Chieti-Pescara (Italy).


Especially in one particular research the FLIR thermal imaging camera proved to be very useful, according to Merla. "We tried to establish a synchrony in autonomic responses between mother and child. The use of thermal imaging cameras allowed us to obtain reliable measures of autonomic responses recorded simultaneously for both children and their mothers without the disadvantages of most of the other methods for


physiological data collection."


In this experiment the toy is prepared to brake during playing (mishap). The mother observes the scene from behind a one-way mirror. Both the child and the mother are observed using a thermal imaging camera.


Whereas the psychological side of social interactions has been studied quite extensively, the physiological side has been largely ignored. Despite the extensive interest in neuroscience on empathy and its relevance to infant development, previous studies investigated maternal empathy mainly by using verbal reports and, in a few cases, by functional neuroimaging. Few studies have reported on the possible involvement of physiological responses during parent-child interactions.


As Merla has had very positive experiences with the use of thermal imaging technology for several medical applications, such as diseases related to micro/macro circulatory, peripheral nervous, autoimmune, muscle-skeletal, and cutaneous systems, the suggestion to use of thermal imaging cameras as a measurement method for this research was an obvious one. "Thermal imaging records the thermal radiation that is emitted spontaneously by the human body. The body and mental responses are therefore purely ecologic."


Emotions and the Autonomic Nervous System


Autonomically-mediated visceral responses are proposed to be closely related to the experience of emotions. The vicarious response of empathy is generally referred to as a


Graphical representation of temperature variations of the nasal tip and maxillary area averaged for a group of children and for a group of mothers. The graphs illustrate the absence of a correlation between thermal variations in the mother and the child during the neutral baseline phase (graphs on the left). By contrast, a strong correlation in thermal variations between children and their mothers is shown during the emotional phases of the experiment (graphs on the right).


common neural coding of the perception of one's own and the other individual's feelings. "It is therefore plausible that empathy also embodies a direct sharing of changes in body physiology between the involved individuals", explained Merla. "This would mean that variations in the thermal data reflect internal processes that are especially active when emotional stimuli are present."


Experiment setup


During the experiment, children were invited by the experimenter to play with a toy. The toy was designed to break during play, giving the impression that the child had accidentally broken it. Mothers were invited to observe their children in interaction with the experimenter through a one-way mirror from a separated room. Two highly sensitive cooled thermal imaging cameras of the FLIR SC 7000 Series were used to simultaneously monitor the child and the mother.


In these cut-outs of the thermal footage clear temperature variations in various facial regions of both the mother and the child can be observed after the toy was broken (mishap) and when the child was soothed afterwards by the experimenter.


In order to quantify thermal variations over time and their correlation between children and their mothers, changes in cutaneous temperature for specific facial regions of interest were calculated. These regions were selected according to previous studies in humans as well as primates: 1) the nasal tip and 2) the maxillary area. As the test subjects were moving around freely, however, tracking these


facial regions proved to be slightly challenging. "Thermal imaging cameras from the FLIR SC7000 series allow very fast data acquisition", Dr Merla said. "We developed a tracking


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36