Article Excerpt: Researchers at Dartmouth say they’ve built the first smartphone app that can reliably detect the onset of depression . . . before the user even knows something is wrong. The app, called MoodCapture, uses a phone’s front camera to capture a person’s facial expressions and surroundings during regular use (not selfies), then evaluates the images using artificial intelligence and facial-image processing software to detect clinical cues associated with depression.
The researchers studied 177 people who were diagnosed with major depressive disorder and found that the app correctly identified early symptoms with 75% accuracy. With fine-tuning, that number is likely to go up. The researchers believe the app could be ready for public use within the next five years. They published their results Tuesday on ArXiv.
“We think that MoodCapture opens the door to assessment tools that would help detect depression in the moments before it gets worse,” said study coauthor Nicholas Jacobson, an assistant professor of biomedical data science.
Full Article: https://tinyurl.com/mr44u6fv
Article Source: Fast Company