Psychiatry services

Friedrich-Alexander-Universitaet Erlangen-Nuernberg (FAU)

Overview This service offers a specialized Mood Induction and Depression Study Laboratory equipped with state-of-the-art multimodal sensor technology. It provides a highly controlled environment for conducting psychological interventions and assessing emotional responses or depressive symptoms, particularly through mobile health applications. By integrating high-resolution video, depth sensing, and advanced non-contact radar systems, we capture fine-grained behavioral responses, including facial expressions and body posture. The laboratory also records critical physiological biosignals such as muscle activity (EMG), cardiac rhythms (ECG), and respiration. This service enables startups and healthcare developers to thoroughly evaluate digital therapeutics, affective computing models, and remote monitoring tools in a standardized, clinically relevant setting. How can the service help you? For companies developing mobile mental health interventions, affective computing algorithms, or non-contact vital sign monitors, acquiring synchronized behavioral and physiological data is a major challenge. This service provides high-fidelity, ground-truth data for mood induction and depression studies. After using our facility, you receive a comprehensive dataset that links your interventions to precise physical, behavioral, and autonomic responses, letting you validate your solutions and refine AI-driven assessments. How will the service be delivered? The service is delivered physically at our specialized laboratory facilities. Execution time depends on the specific intervention protocols and the cohort size. Our expert team configures the recording infrastructure—including camera arrays, radar systems, and biosignal hardware—and integrates them with the workflows under evaluation. Data collection is conducted under strict ethical and clinical guidelines. Upon completion, clients are provided with securely processed, synchronized, and annotated datasets. Additional information Provider description We represent a leading research node within the TEF-Health consortium, specializing in artificial intelligence, machine learning, and digital health innovations. Our team possesses deep expertise in automated movement analysis, multimodal behavioral tracking, and complex data synchronization. With advanced facilities dedicated to biomedical engineering and affective computing, we offer SMEs expert guidance and state-of-the-art testing environments to develop, validate, and certify AI-driven healthcare solutions and wearable technologies. Technical details The laboratory is built around a comprehensive suite of contact and non-contact sensors designed to monitor mood and depression-related markers seamlessly during mobile app interventions. Behavioral & Posture Tracking: The setup features 2 high-resolution RGB Sony cameras and 1 Azure Kinect depth camera for robust 3D human pose estimation and facial expression analysis. This is supplemented by 2 standard webcams and a wireless microphone pair for comprehensive audio-visual tracking. Mobile Ecosystem: Dedicated devices (2 iPhones, 1 iPad, 1 Samsung tablet) are maintained specifically for deploying and testing iOS and Android mobile health (mHealth) applications. Advanced Radar Systems: We utilize non-contact continuous-wave (CW) radar systems—including a 61 GHz EmRad system (TU Hamburg) and a 24 GHz GUARDIAN system (FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg)—to enable unobtrusive vital-sign and micro-movement monitoring. Physiological & Biological Measurement: Standardized assessment of biosignals (EMG, ECG, and RSP) is conducted. The laboratory also supports the collection of biological specimens, processed in accordance with Bio S2 standards. Software Integration: Data acquisition and analysis are managed utilizing Biopac Acqknowledge alongside custom multimodal synchronization pipelines. Service customization The service is highly adaptable to the specific needs of your clinical study or product validation. Clients can choose to utilize the full multimodal suite or select specific sensing modalities—for instance, relying solely on non-contact radar and depth cameras for privacy-preserving monitoring, or focusing entirely on app-based interactions paired with high-fidelity ECG. Camera configurations, mobile app integration steps, and biological sampling protocols can all be tailored to meet your specific technical requirements.