Attention emotion recognition via ECG signals

Background: Physiological signal-based research has been a hot topic in affective computing. Previous works mainly focus on some strong, short-lived emotions (e.g., joy, anger), while the attention, which is a weak and long-lasting emotion, receives less attraction. In this paper, we present a study of attention recognition based on electrocardiogram (ECG) signals, which contain a wealth of information related to emotions. Methods: The ECG dataset is derived from 10 subjects and specialized for attention detection. To relieve the impact of noise of baseline wondering and power-line interference, we apply wavelet threshold denoising as preprocessing and extract rich features by pan-tompkins and wavelet decomposition algorithms. To improve the generalized ability, we tested the performance of a variety of combinations of different feature selection algorithms and classifiers. Results: Experiments show that the combination of generic algorithm and random forest achieve the highest correct classification rate (CCR) of 86.3%. Conclusion: This study indicates the feasibility and bright future of ECG-based attention research.