2014 International Conference on Control, Instrumentation, Energy & Communication(CIEC)

81

A Complete Virtual Instrument for Measuring and

Analyzing Human Stress in Real Time
Sankhadip Saha, MIET

Papri Nag

Mrityunjay Kr. Ray

Dept. of Electrical Engineering

Netaji Subhash Engineering College
Kolkata, India
imsankhadip@gmail.com

Dept. of Electronics & Instrumentation

Narula Institute of Technology
Kolkata, India
papri11nag@gmail.com

Dept. of Electrical Engineering

Netaji Subhash Engineering College
Kolkata, India
amreshkumar92@gmail.com

AbstractA virtual Instrument is designed, prototyped and

developed for the real time measurement and recording of
galvanic skin response (GSR), also known as electrodermal
response to recognize human psycho physiological state under
stressed condition. The virtual instrument also analyzes the
galvanic skin response signals by statistical features. The
Galvanic Skin Response (GSR) is a measure of skin conductivity
which is extensively linked to human emotional condition during
stress and activation. An emotional reaction under stressed
condition often causes increased sweat gland activity in the palms
of the hands and the soles of the feet, making the skin more
conductive in these areas. The experiments are done under stress
and no-stress conditions on 14 subjects of both the gender in the
age group of 18 to 28 years old, mainly on university students.
The experimental observations demonstrate a strong correlation
between measured signals for galvanic skin response (GSR) and
human physiological states. LabVIEW software is used for the
front panel of the virtual instrument whereas MATLAB software
is used for the calculation of features in the back end of the
virtual instrument.
KeywordsVirtual Instrument (VI); Human Stress Analysis;
Galvanic Skin Response (GSR); LabVIEW; MATLAB .

I.

INTRODUCTION

Stress and emotions in daily life affects the

performance of individual. It also affects health and disease in
the individual. A number of physiological markers are widely
used for stress assessment, including: galvanic skin response,
several features of heart beat patterns, blood pressure and
respiration activity [1, 2].
So continuous monitoring the affective state of
individual is often necessary for the understanding and
managing the effect of stress. For this the galvanic skin
response is a simple, useful and reproducible technique, which
helps assess the internal state of individual during mental and
emotional changes [3].
Various models and techniques are already developed for
measurement of galvanic skin response for analysis of stress.
Fortunately, miniaturized wireless devices are also now
available to monitor physio-logical markers and helps
individuals to track the levels of stress caused by psycho
physiological activity. But sometimes further thorough analysis

978-1-4799-2044-0/14/$31.002014IEEE

of individual stress is needed in terms of galvanic skin response

features [4]. Even sometimes statistical features of other
physiological markers together with features of galvanic skin
response signals are required for advanced mental condition
analysis.
In [5], a method is proposed which determines the transient
impedance change of palm instantaneously. The total
frequency characteristics of the skin impedance are determined
using time domain analysis and palm skin impedance during a
galvanic skin reflex (GSR) which is determined by fast fourier
transform (FFT) technique.
In [6], a portable data logger system is designed,
prototyped and developed using a PIC micro-controller for
recording galvanic skin response data and relaying them to a
computer for physiological analysis. Another version of
portable transistor based instrument for skin response
measurement for pain assesment is presented in [7].
It is capable of measuring both galvanic skin response and
acceleration simultaneously in an attempt to disambiguate
valid galvanic skin response signals from motion artifact.
Since without knowledge of underlying motion of a highly
active subject, galvanic skin response signals could be
misinterpreted, a wireless sensor, actionGSR is developed in
[8].
In [9], a stress detection system for computer users is
proposed and developed based on the physiological signals i.e.
galvanic skin response, blood volume pulse, and pupil
diameter and skin temperature by non-invasive and nonintrusive sensors.
An effective and accurate fuzzy logic based real time stress
detection technique [10] is proposed with galvanic skin
response and heart rate (HR) signals only. This technique
gives 99.5 % accuracy by acquisition of galvanic skin
response and heart rate during a period of 10 seconds. And
90.0 % accuracy is achieved by decreasing the acquisition
period to 3-5 seconds.
A real time human emotion recognition method [11] is
developed which is based on statistical classifier - Support
Vector Machine (SVM) with various physiological signals like
galvanic skin response, electrocardiogram (ECG), skin

2014 International Conference on Control, Instrumentation, Energy & Communication(CIEC)

82

temperature etc. as inputs and positive-negative responses of

emotion as outputs of the classifier.

electrodes and potential difference is measured and acquired by

data acquisition system and computer as shown in figure 1.

Emotional reactions often cause increase sweet gland

activity in the soles of the feet. A novel e-textile prototype is
proposed and validated in [12] for measuring galvanic skin
response from the foot using conductive fabric electrodes
embedded in the sock. The sock prototype is useful in the sense
that it provides meaningful measure of galvanic skin response
activity that can be modestly used in day to day monitoring.

The circuit (figure 2.), developed for galvanic skin

response measurement is a simple constant current source
circuit with an op-amp LM-741 and 0.75 M resistances. The
op-amp is operated in non inverting mode with the constant
voltage of 5V is supplied to the non inverting terminal of opamp through 0.75 M resistor and the inverting terminal is
grounded through 1M resistor. The current output is taken
from the non inverting terminal of the op-amp and fed to the
figure tips across the palm through the electrodes.

Here, in this paper, a virtual instrument (VI) concept is

proposed, designed and developed to get objective assessment
of emotional states from the physiological signals before,
during and after physical activity of any individual. This
instrument also analyzes measured physiological signals for
further detailed study.

II.

GALVANIC SKIN RESPONSE

Galvanic Skin Response (GSR) also known as

electrodermal response (EDR), psychogalvanic reflex (PGR),
skin conductance response (SCR) or skin conductance level
(SCL), is a method of measuring the electrical conductance of
the skin which varies with human mental and emotional
conditions. Galvanic skin response refers to changes in
electrical resistance across two regions of the skin. The
electrical resistance of the skin (which is typically large and
varies slowly over time), fluctuates quickly during mental,
physical, and emotional arousal.The most advanced layer of
the cerebral cortex, unique to man, link to the thumb and
forefinger which when suddenly aroused, causes a complex
physiological response causing blood capillaries to enlarge,
thus causes the change in skin resistance. Galvanic skin
response basically reflects the sweat gland activity, which in
turn corresponds to changes in the sympathetic nervous system.
The activity of sweat gland in response to sympathetic nerve
stimulation results in decrease in level of skin resistance. Skin
conductance shows the emotional state as reflected in changes
in the sympathetic nervous system and hence can be used as an
indication of psychological or physiological arousal.
III.

SYSTEM OVERVIEW

For the measurement of galvanic skin response, two

electrodes are placed such that the conductive path between
them crosses the palm of the hand. So the electrodes are placed
on the two adjacent finger tips. The reason for the placement of
electrodes on across the palm is the high concentration of
eccrine sweet glands in the palm of the hand. The measurement
is usually always taken across the palm, because the hands are
easily accessible and not used for other purposes during the
experimentation. Human skin is a good conductor of electricity
and when a small current is injected between the electrodes,
changes in the skins conduction of that signal can be
measured. The variable that is measured is either skin
resistance or its reciprocal, skin conductance. According to
Ohms Law skin resistance equals the voltage applied between
two electrodes on the skin divided by the current passed
through the skin. So a very small but constant current is
allowed to pass through the skin of the palm between the

Figure 1. System Setup

Figure 2. GSR Circuit

A data acquisition setup NI CDAQ 9172 with NI 9205

module from National Instruments (NI) is used to digitize the
voltage signal at a sampling rate of 200 samples per second and
transfer the waveform data to the computer. Since current is
known, conductance can easily be found from the voltage
signals. LabVIEW software is used as a development platform
for the Virtual human stress analyzer. A graphical user
interface (GUI) is developed to monitor the online conductance
level of the skin before, during and after stress condition. The
block diagram of the overall system is given in figure 3.

Figure 3. Block Diagram

2014 International Conference on Control, Instrumentation, Energy & Communication(CIEC)

The system has two mode of operation i.e one for

recording the acquired galvanic skin response signal in
LabVIEW file format and the other is to analyze the
corresponding recorded signal. Since constant current is
known , conductance can easily be found from the voltage
signal and displayed in the waveform graph in LabVIEW. A
conductance meter is used for ranging the data into six stages
as extremely high, high, medium, below medium , low and
very low by comparing the output data with some reference
values. Lastly the signal is recorded
in LabVIEW
measurement file. In analysis mode statistical features of
signal are extracted. For more advancing the system here
MATLAB is used. In LabVIEW it is possible to call
MATLAB server automatically by using MATLAB script in
LabVIEW program. At first the recorded signal is imported on
the MATLAB workspace. Due to the raw response signal is
very noisy here a low pass finite impulse response filter is
used for de-noising the high frequency noise. Normalization of
signal is done after filtering the signal. Finally the six
statistical features are extracted from where the mean and
standard deviation are used measure the stress level of human
body. The system flowchart is shown in figure. 4.

83

signals in MATLAB, the virtual instrument fetches the data

from MATLAB and displays these features in the front panel.
The front panel of the virtual instrument is shown in figure 5.

Figure 5. Complete Virtual Instrument

Here MATLAB software is used in background of

LabVIEW software since MATLAB has many toolboxes for
analysis in comparison whereas LabVIEW is efficient for data
acquisition. Although our work for real time human stress
measurement and analysis described in this paper could also
be implemented in LabVIEW software alone but provision for
further critical analysis of human stress condition with various
tools like statistical and intelligent pattern recognition and
machine learning technique [17,18] is ensured by
incorporating MATLAB. An extensive code is written for
integrating MALAB software to read LabVIEW file format
with automation.
IV.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS

Here the concept is based on real time measurement of

physiological stress of different subjects i.e. basically college
going students. Normally, in relax time, skin resistance are
becomes higher and at in stress the skin resistance decreases.
Hence by the inverse relationship between skin conductance
and skin resistance, a relationship between stress and skin
conductance i.e. the stress is directly proportional to the skin
conductance. So by measuring skin conductance, human stress
can be measured.

Figure 4. System Flowchart

The virtual instrument is complete in the sense that it not

only measures and monitors the stress level in real time but
also records the galvanic skin response signals for further
analysis. Once the signals are recorded in LabVIEW software
formats, this instrument is capable to connect to MATLAB
software and convert the file formats automatically for
analyzing the signals in MATLAB. After analyzing and
calculation of statistical features of galvanic skin response

To measure skin conductance a constant current must be

passed through the body. So a simple circuit is designed which
can supply a small constant current through the body through
the electrodes in the finger tips of hand. By knowing the
current and measured voltage across the electrodes skin
resistance is deduced, hence skin conductance. Some high
frequency noise will be there. So for de noising, data must be
filtered and for that here a low pass finite impulse response
(FIR) filter is used. Finite impulse response filters are
particularly useful for applications where exact linear phase
response is required. The FIR filter is generally implemented
in a non-recursive way which guarantees a stable filter. Finite
impulse response (FIR) is a digital filter which operates on
discrete-time signals. The term Finite impulse response arises
because the filter output is computed as a weighted, finite term

2014 International Conference on Control, Instrumentation, Energy & Communication(CIEC)

sum of past, present, and perhaps future values of the filter

input. Here we design finite impulse response filter using
window method where the unit sample response obtained from
infinite duration are truncated at some point say n=M-1 to
yield an FIR filter of length M. This truncated of unit sample
response to length M-1 is same as multiplying it by the
rectangular window. Finally these filtered signals are then
used to extract the galvanic skin response features (statistical
features).

(a)

the length of the FIR filter was 64, the filtered signal was
shifted forward by 32 sampling intervals to maintain the time
information. After filtering, the mean value of this signal was
obtained as one of the galvanic skin response features. Figure
6 shows raw galvanic response signal before filtering and
processed signal after filtering for subject SB-M12 for various
stress conditions.
For different subjects the skin conductance is different, so
here the main aim is to find the changes of skin conductance
from relax position to stressed position. Individuals of
different age groups are randomly selected as subjects for the
validation of the virtual instrument. They are subjected to
vigorous physical activity as a measure of stress. Galvanic
skin response signals are measured and recorded as skin
conductivity. The signals are recorded for 10 seconds duration
each for before, during and after stress conditions. Recorded
signals are then imported and analyzed for calculation of mean
and standard deviation.
TABLE I.

(b)

(c)

(d)

(e)

(f)
Figure 6:
Raw galvanic skin response signal before filtering for (a) before stress
condition (c) during stress condition and (e) after stress condition
Processed galvanic skin response signal after filtering for (b) before
stress condition (d) during stress condition and (f) after stress
condition

The first step to process the raw galvanic skin response

signal is to find the galvanic skin response tonic responses. A
low-pass finite impulse response (FIR) filter with 64 delay
units and a cutoff frequency of 2Hz was designed to filter out
the recording noise while retaining the galvanic skin response
waveforms, whose bandwidth is approximately 1 Hz. Since

84

Subject.

SBM1
SBM2
SBM3
SB-F4
SBM5
SBM6
SBM7
SBM8
SB-F9
SBF10
SBM11
SBM12
SBM13
SBM14

Age

RESULT OF EXPERIMENT

Before Stress

During Stress

After Stress

22

Mean
7.5515

SD
0.9455

Mean
7.6621

SD
0.9851

Mean
7.5013

SD
0.9312

22

3.1914

0.4866

3.5895

0.4159

3.1200

0.4567

23

7.5210

0.8641

11.9968

1.4325

7.6523

0.8865

25
25

9.0892
5.3542

1.1170
0.7202

9.9715
6.5344

1.2858
0.9013

8.9904
5.4956

1.0351
0.8015

21

1.8674

17.0542

1.9803

5.4956

0.6301

23

11.988
3
8.5070

1.0431

8.1749

0.9146

5.2005

0.5851

21

6.7971

1.0375

4.2517

0.4937

3.4849

0.3949

22

2.2503

12.6999

1.4587

10.5672

1.2376

21

14.430
9
3.0412

0.3675

5.6396

0.7323

4.3749

0.6292

28

6.0481

1.2869

8.2389

1.0218

5.8141

1.0342

26

1.3993

15.4099

1.9150

13.2805

1.9230

26

11.560
1
3.4555

0.3966

4.6873

0.5700

2.2176

0.2490

22

5.7133

0.7780

6.6824

0.9366

4.0574

0.4768

V.

CONCLUSION

In this paper a complete virtual instrument (VI)

concept is proposed and tested for galvanic skin response
measurement and analysis of human stress on 14 subjects of
different age groups. It has been seen that stress during
physical activity amongst 14 subjects increases while stress of
only three subjects during stress conditions decreases. Stress
significantly decreases again after the physical activity. This
validates the concept of virtual instrument. The instrument is
capable of incorporating mathematical analysis and artificial
intelligence with the galvanic skin response signals for
prediction of stress levels. electrocardiogram (ECG) and
electroencephalogram (EEG) signals can also be monitored,

2014 International Conference on Control, Instrumentation, Energy & Communication(CIEC)

recorded and analyzed in conjunction with galvanic skin

response signal for advanced medical diagnosis which may be
very essential in the field of bio medical engineering. On the
other hand this virtual instrument can be augmented for stress
pattern recognition and classification using various machine
learning techniques by easily accessing various toolboxes of
MATLAB.

[14]

[15]

ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors acknowledge the all kinds of support from the
Control and Automation Centre (CAC) of Netaji Subhash
Engineering College, Kolkata, India. They are also thanking to
some UG and PG students of the institute and specially Mr.
Supratik Ghosh and Mr.Satyaki Sen who have helped them in
arranging the experimentation.

[16]

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