Journal Article DKFZ-2026-02823

http://join2-wiki.gsi.de/foswiki/pub/Main/Artwork/join2_logo100x88.png
Quantifying the human visual exposome with vision language models.

 ;  ;  ;  ;  ;  ;  ;

2026

Missing Journal / Fehlende Zeitschrift 1(1), 25 () [10.1038/s44488-026-00023-x]  GO

Abstract: The visual environment is a fundamental yet unquantified determinant of mental health. While the concept of the environmental exposome is well-established, current methods rely on coarse geospatial proxies or biased self-reports, failing to capture the first-person visual context of daily life. Here we show that coupling ecological momentary assessment with vision-language models can quantify the semantic richness of human visual experience. Across 2,674 participant-generated photographs, model-derived estimates of 'greenness' robustly predicted momentary affect and chronic stress, consistent with established benchmarks. We then developed a semi-autonomous large language model-based pipeline that mined over seven million scientific publications to extract nearly 1,000 environmental features empirically linked to mental health. When applied to real-world imagery, up to 33% of model-extracted context ratings significantly correlated with affect and stress.

Keyword(s): Environmental sciences ; Psychology


Note: #NCTZFB9# / Missing Journal: Communications AI & Computing (Commun. AI Comput.) = 3091-292X (import from CrossRef, PubMed, , Journals: inrepo02.dkfz.de)

Contributing Institute(s):
  1. Koordinierungsstelle NCT Heidelberg (HD02)
Research Program(s):
  1. 899 - ohne Topic (POF4-899) (POF4-899)

Click to display QR Code for this record

The record appears in these collections:
Document types > Articles > Journal Article
Public records
In process
In process

 Record created 2026-11-13, last modified 2026-11-13


Rate this document:

Rate this document:
1
2
3
 
(Not yet reviewed)