Imagine if scientists could decide how you’re feeling just by analyzing your face — through skin color, pulse, and breathing.

While scientists have already created systems that are capable of doing this, researchers at Rice University have developed a more effective one called the DistancePPG, which uses algorithms to identify how you're feeling. The DistancePPG detects subtle changes in a person’s skin color, which are caused by fluctuations of blood volume under the skin; pulse and breathing rates can actually be explained from these changes.

The scientists were inspired by visiting the neonatal intensive care unit (ICU). “This story began in 2013 when we visited Texas Children’s Hospital to talk to doctors and get ideas,” Mayank Kumar, a graduate student at Rice who worked on the project, said in a press release. “That was when we saw the newborn babies in the neonatal ICU. We saw multiple wires attached to them and asked, ‘Why?’”

While wires are used to monitor babies’ heart rate and breathing, “the problem was that the babies would roll, or their mothers needed to take care of them, and the wires would be taken off and put back on,” Kumar said, which could damage the baby’s skin.

As more and more people are using health apps on their mobile phones to monitor their exercise and overall health, and some hospitals are even using smartphones to diagnose people — the Rice University researchers believe that the DistancePPG can be developed into an app someday. This way, a typical individual can monitor their vital signs without having to go to the doctor's office.

“Vital signs such as pulse rate and breathing rate are currently measured using contact probes,” the authors write in the Abstract of their study. “But, non-contact methods for measuring vital signs are desirable both in hospital settings (e.g. in NICU) and for ubiquitous in-situ health tracking (e.g. on mobile phone and computers with webcams.”