Project Team
Students
Han Dang
Software Engineering
Penn State Erie
Rowan Fisher
Software Engineering
Penn State Erie
Faculty Mentors
Omar Ashour
Penn State Erie
School of Engineering
Brad Sottile
Penn State University Park
School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Project
https://sites.psu.edu/mcreu/files/formidable/2/Research-Poster-1.pdf
Project Video
Project Abstract
Dementia is a progressive disease determined by the loss of problem-solving capabilities, speech, memory, and other cognitive abilities that interfere with daily life. Dementia patients require attention and support as they struggle to accomplish simple tasks, and even worse, remember who they were before dementia. In recent years, there has been an increase in the number of dementia patients and the difficulty to assist them. These increases have led to the necessity of providing improved methods, e.g., dementia simulations, to educate, prepare, and support the caregivers of these patients. Dementia patients cannot express their feelings and needs well, which causes it to be challenging to relate to and understand these individuals. Empathy is an important aspect that increases the quality of care. The overall goal of this project is to analyze facial expressions to measure empathy when a caregiver is interacting with a patient with dementia. To achieve this goal, a facial recognition system is developed to measure an observer’s level of empathy as they watch a video of a patient with dementia. The facial recognition system is programmed in Python and uses recordings of the user’s expressions to evaluate and determine the level of empathy the participant has towards dementia. These findings will help improve dementia training methods such as dementia simulations that are used to improve caregivers’ knowledge and empathy toward patients with dementia.
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