Affiliations: Experimental Office Facility, Centre on NEAT, Mayo
Clinic, Rochester, MN, USA | Computational Physiology Lab, University of Houston,
Houston, TX, USA | Department of Statistics, Athens University of
Economics and Business, Athens, Greece
Note: [] Address for correspondence: James Levine, M.D., Ph.D., Endocrine
Research Unit, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN, 55905, USA. Tel.: +1 507 284 2191;
Fax: +1 507 255 4828; E-mail: levine.james@mayo.edu
Abstract: Occupational stress is universally experienced and is emerging as a
major risk factor for physical and mental illness and a key factor in poor work
performance and low job satisfaction. However, the technology does not
currently exist to unobtrusively measure occupational stress in real-time.
Here, we describe the design and clinical validation of an automated
high-definition thermal imaging system that can be used to quantify human
stress, remotely and instantaneously. Healthy human subjects underwent a
computer-based version of the Stroop-color conflict test, which is a validated
stress provocation test, in an experimental office facility. In separate
experiments, the same subjects completed a mental arithmetic challenge. The
thermal signal associated with stress provocation is near-instantaneous
corrugator warming. The stress response was detected in all subjects for all
stress-events compared to the respective baselines. Furthermore, there was
remarkable inter-individual preservation of the corrugator signal with stress
(R^{2}= 0.96, P< 0.001). High-definition
thermal imaging can be used for real-time detection of stress provocation. This
technology may prove to be of help in ameliorating office-place stress.
