Capturing Representative Hand Use at Home Using Egocentric Video in Individuals with Upper Limb Impairment

Podsumowanie

A protocol is proposed to capture natural hand function of individuals with hand impairments during their daily routines using an egocentric camera. The goal of the protocol is to ensure that the recordings are representative of an individual's typical hand use during activities of daily living at home.

Streszczenie

Impaired hand function after neurological injuries can have a major impact on independence and quality of life. Most existing upper limb assessments are carried out in person, which is not always indicative of hand use in the community. Novel approaches to capture hand function in daily life are required to measure the true impact of rehabilitation interventions. Egocentric video combined with computer vision for automated analysis has been proposed to evaluate hand use at home. However, there are limitations to the duration of continuous recordings. We present a protocol designed to ensure that the videos obtained are representative of daily routines while respecting participant privacy.

A representative recording schedule is selected through a collaborative process between the researchers and participants, to ensure that the videos capture natural tasks and performance, while being useful for hand assessment. Use of the equipment and procedures is demonstrated to the participants. A total of 3 h of video recordings are scheduled over two weeks. To reduce privacy concerns, participants have full control to start and stop recordings, and the opportunity to edit the videos before returning them to the research team. Reminders are provided, as well as help calls and home visits if necessary.

The protocol was tested with 9 stroke survivors and 14 individuals with cervical spinal cord injury. The videos obtained contained a variety of activities, such as meal preparation, dishwashing, and knitting. An average of 3.11 ± 0.98 h of video were obtained. The recording periods varied from 12-69 d, due to illness or unexpected events in some cases. Data was successfully obtained from twenty-two out of 23 participants, with 6 participants requiring assistance from the investigators during the home recording period. The protocol was effective for collecting videos that contained valuable information about hand function at home after neurological injuries.

Wprowadzenie

Hand function is a determinant of independence and quality of life across clinical populations with upper limb impairments^1,2. Capturing the hand function of individuals with hand impairments at home is vital to evaluating the progress of their ability to carry out activities of daily living (ADLs) during and after rehabilitation. Most clinical hand function assessments are conducted in a clinical or laboratory environment, rather than at home^3,4. Existing clinical hand function assessments that seek to capture the impact on ADLs at home are questionna....

Protokół

The study was approved by the Research Ethics Board of the University Health Network. Signed informed consent was obtained from each participant before enrollment in the study. Signed informed consent was also obtained from any caregivers or household members appearing in video recordings.

1. Verification of the protocol applicability to the individual

NOTE: This protocol is intended to be applied to individuals with impaired but not completely absent hand function (specific criteria can be adapted to the population and/or question of interest).

1. Ask participants whether their affected hands impact the....

Wyniki

Participant demographics and inclusion criteria
A sample of 23 participants was recruited for these studies: 9 stroke survivors (6 men, 3 women) and 14 individuals with cSCI (12 men, 2 women). Summary demographic and clinical information for the recruited sample are reported in Table 1.

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Age (years)

Dyskusje

We presented a protocol for recording videos of ADLs at home using wearable cameras in individuals with upper limb impairments, such as cSCI and stroke. The protocol is flexible and can be goal-directed to capture hand function performance in specific ADLs or to track the progress of rehabilitation remotely in people living at home. The egocentric vision paradigm has great potential for remote monitoring of hand function in individuals living in the community, and for optimizing rehabilitation once people are discharged .......

Materiały

Name	Company	Catalog Number	Comments
Egocentric camera	GoPro Inc., CA, USA	GoPro Hero 4 and 5	A camera that records from a first-person angle.
Battery chager and batteries	GoPro Inc., CA, USA	MAX Dual Battery Charger + Battery	Extra batteries for the camera and battery charger
Camera charger	GoPro Inc., CA, USA	Supercharger	This charger is connected to the camera directly without disassembling the camera frame.
Camera frame	GoPro Inc., CA, USA	The Frame	The hinge of the camera frame can be used to adjust the angle of view of the camera.
Headband for the camera	GoPro Inc., CA, USA	Head Strap + QuickClip
SD card	SanDisk, CA, USA	32GB microSD
Tablet	ASUSTeK Computer Inc., Taiwan	ZenPad 8.0 Z380M	The tablet is installed with the GoPro App in order to connect with the camera.