# Video-based sympathetic arousal assessment via peripheral blood flow estimation

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2311.06930 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.06930/

## Key facts

- Cited by 6 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 4 of its 51 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 12 Nov 2023.

## Builds on (most cited first, 4 of 4)

- [Multi-Task Temporal Shift Attention Networks for On-Device Contactless Vitals Measurement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.03790/) (2020)
- [PhysFormer: Facial Video-based Physiological Measurement with Temporal Difference Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.12082/) (2021)
- [Remote Heart Rate Measurement from Highly Compressed Facial Videos: an End-to-end Deep Learning Solution with Video Enhancement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1907.11921/) (2019)
- [Overcoming Difficulty in Obtaining Dark-skinned Subjects for Remote-PPG by Synthetic Augmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.06007/) (2021)

## Built on by (most cited first, 6 of 6)

- [egoPPG: Heart Rate Estimation from Eye-Tracking Cameras in Egocentric Systems to Benefit Downstream Vision Tasks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.20879/) (2025)
- [How Suboptimal is Training rPPG Models with Videos and Targets from Different Body Sites?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.10582/) (2024)
- [SympCam: Remote Optical Measurement of Sympathetic Arousal](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.20552/) (2024)
- [egoEMOTION: Egocentric Vision and Physiological Signals for Emotion and Personality Recognition in Real-World Tasks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.22129/) (2025)
- [SkillSpotter: Pose-Aware Multi-View Skilled Action Detection and Grading in Ego-Exo Videos](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.31127/) (2026)
- [EgoHRV: Continuous Heart Rate Variability Estimation from Egocentric Systems for Autonomic Response and Skill Assessment](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.18711/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

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.