Selection of Optimal Physiological Features for Accurate Detection of Stress

Stress is an established risk factor in the development of addiction and in reinstating drug seeking. Substance use disorder (SUD) is a dangerous epidemic that affects the brain and behavior. Despite this growing epidemic and its subsequent consequences, there are limited management and treatment options, pharmacotherapies and psychosocial treatments available. To this end, there is a need for new and improved personalized devices and treatments for the detection and management of SUD. Based on documented negative effects of stress in SUD, in this paper, our objective was to select a few significant physiological features from a set of 8 features collected by a chest-worn RespiBAN Professional in 15 individuals. We used three machine learning classifiers on these optimal physiological features to detect stress. Our results indicate that best accuracies were achieved when electrodermal activity (EDA), body temperature and chest-worn accelerometer were considered as features for the classification. Challenges, implications and applications were discussed. In the near future, the proposed methods will be replicated in individuals with SUD.