Infrared method to assess the student´s anticipative examination stress

It is well known that each student´s examination triggers several psychosomatically reactions with more or less amplitude. The authors are interested in finding an objective method to assess the stress and to find the period of maximum amplitude before and during the examination, without interfering with the examination process. Therefore the proposed method is a non contact measurement involving the infrared thermal mapping of the hands. Due to important blood vessels cross-section changes temperature variation occurs indicating a certain amount of stress. In order to validate the research hypothesis an experiment was conducted on volunteer students. The results showed that examination stress is an important issue for educators and taking measures in order to lower the stress level gives important benefits by increasing the academic rate of success.