The researchers analysed the facial action units from 1812 videos of 604 individuals.
Of these, 61 had Parkinson’s disease and 543 did not. The participants had a mean age 63 years old.
In these videos, participants were asked to make several facial expressions. A smiling, disgusted, and surprised face, followed by a neutral face.
“Using techniques from computer vision and machine learning, we objectively measured the variance of the facial muscle movements and used it to distinguish between individuals with and without Parkinson’s disease,” states the report, which has been published in npj Digital Medicine journal.
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