Electrodermal activity (EDA) is considered a standard marker of sympathetic activity. However, traditional EDA measurement requires electrodes in steady contact with the skin. Can sympathetic arousal be measured using only an optical sensor, such as an RGB camera? This paper presents a novel approach to infer sympathetic arousal by measuring the peripheral blood flow on the face or hand optically. We contribute a self-recorded dataset of 21 participants, comprising synchronized videos of participants' faces and palms and gold-standard EDA and photoplethysmography (PPG) signals. Our results show that we can measure peripheral sympathetic responses that closely correlate with the ground truth EDA. We obtain median correlations of 0.57 to 0.63 between our inferred signals and the ground truth EDA using only videos of the participants' palms or foreheads or PPG signals from the foreheads or fingers. We also show that sympathetic arousal is best inferred from the forehead, finger, or palm.

翻译：皮肤电活动（EDA）被认为是交感神经激活的标准标志物。然而，传统的EDA测量需要电极与皮肤保持稳定接触。交感神经激活能否仅通过光学传感器（如RGB相机）来测量？本文提出了一种通过光学测量面部或手部外周血流来推断交感神经激活的新方法。我们贡献了一个包含21名参与者的自建数据集，其中包含同步录制的参与者面部和手掌视频，以及金标准EDA和光电容积描记（PPG）信号。我们的结果表明，能够测量与真实EDA高度相关的外周交感神经反应。仅使用参与者手掌或前额的视频，或来自前额或手指的PPG信号，我们推断的信号与真实EDA之间的中位数相关系数为0.57至0.63。此外，我们还表明，从前额、手指或手掌处推断交感神经激活的效果最佳。