# A Survey of Automatic Facial Micro-expression Analysis: Databases, Methods and Challenges

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/1806.05781 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/1806.05781/

## Key facts

- Cited by 16 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 15 Jun 2018.

## Built on by (most cited first, 16 of 16)

- [Video-based Facial Micro-Expression Analysis: A Survey of Datasets, Features and Algorithms](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.12728/) (2022)
- [Deep Learning for Micro-expression Recognition: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.02823/) (2021)
- [Feature refinement: An expression-specific feature learning and fusion method for micro-expression recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2101.04838/) (2021)
- [Graph-based Facial Affect Analysis: A Review](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.15599/) (2021)
- [Shallow Optical Flow Three-Stream CNN for Macro- and Micro-Expression Spotting from Long Videos](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.06489/) (2021)
- [AU-aware graph convolutional network for Macro- and Micro-expression spotting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.09114/) (2023)
- [Data Leakage and Evaluation Issues in Micro-Expression Analysis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.11425/) (2022)
- [Learning to Rank Onset-Occurring-Offset Representations for Micro-Expression Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.04664/) (2023)
- [Geometric Graph Representation with Learnable Graph Structure and Adaptive AU Constraint for Micro-Expression Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.00380/) (2022)
- [Infused Suppression Of Magnification Artefacts For Micro-AU Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.09326/) (2025)
- [Deep Insights of Learning based Micro Expression Recognition: A Perspective on Promises, Challenges and Research Needs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.04935/) (2022)
- [MELDAE: A Framework for Micro-Expression Spotting, Detection, and Automatic Evaluation in In-the-Wild Conversational Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.22575/) (2025)
- [Region attention and graph embedding network for occlusion objective class-based micro-expression recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.05904/) (2021)
- [A Dynamic 3D Spontaneous Micro-expression Database: Establishment and Evaluation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.00166/) (2021)
- [Is Micro-expression Ethnic Leaning?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.10209/) (2025)
- [Artificial Intelligence can Recognize Whether a Job Applicant is Selling and/or Lying According to Facial Expressions and Head Movements Much More Correctly Than Human Interviewers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.17461/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Over the last few years, automatic facial micro-expression analysis has garnered increasing attention from experts across different disciplines because of its potential applications in various fields such as clinical diagnosis, forensic investigation and security systems. Advances in computer algorithms and video acquisition technology have rendered machine analysis of facial micro-expressions possible today, in contrast to decades ago when it was primarily the domain of psychiatrists where analysis was largely manual. Indeed, although the study of facial micro-expressions is a well-established field in psychology, it is still relatively new from the computational perspective with many interesting problems. In this survey, we present a comprehensive review of state-of-the-art databases and methods for micro-expressions spotting and recognition. Individual stages involved in the automation of these tasks are also described and reviewed at length. In addition, we also deliberate on the challenges and future directions in this growing field of automatic facial micro-expression analysis.