  Micro-expressions are brief spontaneous facial expressions that appear on a
face when a person conceals an emotion, making them different to normal facial
expressions in subtlety and duration. Currently, emotion classes within the
CASME II dataset are based on Action Units and self-reports, creating conflicts
during machine learning training. We will show that classifying expressions
using Action Units, instead of predicted emotion, removes the potential bias of
human reporting. The proposed classes are tested using LBP-TOP, HOOF and HOG 3D
feature descriptors. The experiments are evaluated on two benchmark FACS coded
datasets: CASME II and SAMM. The best result achieves 86.35\% accuracy when
classifying the proposed 5 classes on CASME II using HOG 3D, outperforming the
result of the state-of-the-art 5-class emotional-based classification in CASME
II. Results indicate that classification based on Action Units provides an
objective method to improve micro-expression recognition.
