2011 Volume 49 Issue 6 Pages 836-842
In the field of nursing care for the elderly persons, understanding of their somatic sensation such as pain is very important for care workers to provide appropriate care. However, it is not always easy for elderly person with declined verbal function. Therefore, the objective evaluation method of pain intensity without verbal communication is required. In this study, pain evaluation system which can be used in daily life without verbal communication was developed. The system is noninvasive, because the information corresponding to pain intensity is extracted from facial expression. In order to digitalize the facial expression, the images of facial expression were extracted from the web cam on real time, and were analyzed sequentially. Pain stimulation test was carried out for healthy adults by dipping their hand into ice water (cold pressor test). A strong correlation was observed for young adults between pain face factor calculated from the facial expression digitalized by the system and sensory evaluation score of pain, VAS value. It indicates the validity of this system for estimation of pain intensity.
