Selfie videos can reveal your health condition

Researchers at the University of Rochester have developed a computer-based app that can analyse selfie videos as the person engages with social media and monitor his or her health condition.

The device "quietly observes people's behaviour" following their activity in social networks and not using any other data.

It does not require the user to explicitly state what he or she is feeling, input any extra information or wear any special gear. Everything is clear and precise.

For example, the app was able to show a user's heart rate simply by monitoring very small, subtle changes in the user's forehead colour. It also takes into consideration people's heart rate, blinking rate, eye pupil radius and head movement rate.

At the same time, the program also analysed both what the users posted on Twitter, what they read, how fast they scrolled, their keystroke rate and their mouse click rate. All this speaks about mental and physical health.

The app was tested among 27 participants, and researchers sent them messages with sentiment to induce their emotion. The program helped to find out whether those messages brought positive, neutral or negative emotions among the participants.

Later, the app will be taughed to define concrete emotions, like sadness or anger.

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