Novel method and real-time system for detecting the Cardiac Defense Response based on the ECG

This paper describes a novel integrated system for detecting human emotions using the electrocardiogram (ECG) signal. We describe two different algorithms to detect the heartbeat (QRS complex) in the ECG signal. Their output is used by a third algorithm used to detect a basic emotion response, known as Cardiac Defense Response (CDR), which precedes the emotion of fear. We implemented these algorithms in a real-time system for mobile devices using the SPINE Android programming framework. The proposed system has been validated on 40 subjects during controlled experiments and recognized correctly the activation of the CDR mechanism reaching an overall accuracy of 65%.