Assessment of Respiratory Responses to Emotional Virtual Reality Stimuli with Non-contact Respiration Monitoring System

In this study, a non-contact respiration signal recording system used to assess respiratory system during emotional stimulations. Respiration signal was subtracted due to the depth of the person's chest wall with a RGB-D camera. Respiratory data were obtained from 10 individuals, 5 healthy women and 5 healthy men. Four different records were collected from 10 healthy individuals that were sitting in front of the RGB-D camera. In the first experiment, a person was recorded while sitting in daily life. In the second experiment, volunteers were shown horror videos with virtual reality stimuli. In the third experiment, volunteers were shown video that would stir excitement with virtual stimuli. In the last experiment, a video was shown that would make the volunteers feel laughing. The power spectral density attribute of respiratory signals was estimated for each stimulus. Finally, the mean values of the four different frequency bands were calculated as feature vectors to investigate patterns in respiration signals. Different patterns in respiratory signals for each stimulus were observed, thus this contactless respiration monitoring system can be used for investigating respiratory responses to emotional virtual reality stimuli.