Wearable sensors for measuring movement in short sessions of mindfulness sitting meditation: A pilot study

Mindfulness techniques are useful tools in health and well-being. To improve and facilitate formal training, beginners need to know if they are in a stable sitting posture and if they can hold it. Previous monitoring studies did not consider stability during sitting meditation or were specific for longer traditional practices. In this paper, we have extended and adapted previous studies to modern mindfulness practices and posed two questions: (a) Which is the best meditation seat for short sessions? In this way, the applications of stability measures are expanded to meditation activities, in which the sitting posture favors stability, and (b) Which is the most sensitive location of an accelerometer to measure body motion during short meditation sessions? A pilot study involving 31 volunteers was conducted using inertial sensors. The results suggest that thumb, head, or infraclavicular locations can be chosen to measure stability despite the habitual lumbar or sacral region found in the literature. Another important finding of this study is that zafus, chairs, and meditation benches are suitable for short meditation sessions in a sitting posture, although the zafu seems to allow for fewer postural changes. This finding opens new opportunities to design very simple and comfortable measuring systems

Positive verbal suggestion optimizes postural control

Balance is a very important function that allows maintaining a stable stance needed for many daily life activities and for preventing falls. We investigated whether balance control could be improved by a placebo procedure consisting of verbal suggestion. Thirty healthy volunteers were randomized in two groups (placebo and control) and asked to perform a single-leg stance task in which they had to stand as steadily as possible on the dominant leg. The task was repeated in three sessions (T0, T1, T2). At T1 and T2 an inert treatment was applied on the leg, by informing the placebo group that it was effective in improving balance. The control group was overtly told that treatment was inert. An accelerometer applied on participants' leg allowed to measure body sways in different directions. Subjective parameters, like perception of stability, were also collected. Results showed that the placebo group had less body sways than the control group at T2, both in the three-dimensional space and in the anterior-posterior direction. Furthermore, the placebo group perceived to be more stable than the control group. This study represents the first evidence that placebo effect optimizes posture, with a potential translational impact in patients with postural and gait disturbances

Quantifying Quality of Life

Describes technological methods and tools for objective and quantitative assessment of QoL Appraises technology-enabled methods for incorporating QoL measurements in medicine Highlights the success factors for adoption and scaling of technology-enabled methods This open access book presents the rise of technology-enabled methods and tools for objective, quantitative assessment of Quality of Life (QoL), while following the WHOQOL model. It is an in-depth resource describing and examining state-of-the-art, minimally obtrusive, ubiquitous technologies. Highlighting the required factors for adoption and scaling of technology-enabled methods and tools for QoL assessment, it also describes how these technologies can be leveraged for behavior change, disease prevention, health management and long-term QoL enhancement in populations at large. Quantifying Quality of Life: Incorporating Daily Life into Medicine fills a gap in the field of QoL by providing assessment methods, techniques and tools. These assessments differ from the current methods that are now mostly infrequent, subjective, qualitative, memory-based, context-poor and sparse. Therefore, it is an ideal resource for physicians, physicians in training, software and hardware developers, computer scientists, data scientists, behavioural scientists, entrepreneurs, healthcare leaders and administrators who are seeking an up-to-date resource on this subject

Ergonomics problems in dental profession-dentists working position

Background/Aim: Dental professionals are under higher risk of development musculoskeletal disorders. Working in unnatural position is one of the main risk factor for the development of MSDs. The aim of study was to record inclinations of the back in dentists during typically dental work. Material and Methods: In order to monitor the inclination of the body, high-performance sensor systems, triaxial digital 12-bit accelerometers LIS3LV02 (SGS-Thomson Microelectronics, USA) were installed. The inclination of the body was measured in ten dentists, while performing dental work. Results: During dental work in a sitting position, sloping back more than 20 ̊ was during 74% of the time, while during standing 62% of the time. The participants performed the dental examination sloping to the left side. During sitting, the inclination to the left side was greater than 20 ̊ during 65% of the time, while during work in the standing position it was 50%. Conclusions: An inclination of the back, more than 20 degrees is state as one of the main risk factor for the development of MSD. Inclination of the dentist's body in antero-posterior and medio-lateral direction during daily work in standing as well in sitting position was greater than 20 degrees. According to those facts dentists are under risk of developing musculoskeletal diseases during their daily working procedure. According to that ergonomics in dentistry is an area of research that needs more attention. The implementation of ergonomic principles in usual dental work leads to increased work performance, greater satisfaction, efficiency and productivit

Exploring Design Opportunities for Technology-Supported Yoga Practices at Home

Department of Human Factors EngineeringYoga is a discipline that integrates mind and bodily exercises practiced for a number of health benefits. Although physical and mental health benefits from practicing yoga are well-known, people address time and cost as the primary barrier to incorporating yoga practices on a regular basis. A cost-effective solution to these limiting factors is adopting at-home practices. However, starting at-home yoga practices is difficult, especially for beginners, due to the lack of feedback on practitioners??? performance. To tackle this challenge, we explore design opportunities for an interactive artifact that can effectively support yoga practices at home that can potentially replace professional personal trainers. Our approach for exploring this design space begins with a user study with a group of yoga practitioners in order to identify design requirements in a yoga practice environment. Based on the results from the user study, we provide some design insights for developing a feedback-based artifact for yoga practice in the home environment. Then, we exemplify how suggested implications can be applied to design with an illustration of a biofeedback-based mat for yoga breathing exercises. Beyond this, we inspect how the mechanism of biofeedback for breathing can be implemented by building a low-cost respiration phase detector to evaluate the quality of breath. The results from the study on the development of phase detector show per-user classifiers can identify respiration phases with mean F-scores of 0.69 for all poses and 0.78 for the baseline pose. This is an acceptable result acknowledging numerous momentary judgments are made to identify each breathing phase. Moreover, per-user classifiers for identifying three yoga poses show promising results, which can expand the application areas of the breathing phase detector. Through this series of context-driven exploratory studies, we demonstrate approaches to investigate design opportunities for technology-supported at-home yoga.clos

Quantifying Quality of Life

Describes technological methods and tools for objective and quantitative assessment of QoL Appraises technology-enabled methods for incorporating QoL measurements in medicine Highlights the success factors for adoption and scaling of technology-enabled methods This open access book presents the rise of technology-enabled methods and tools for objective, quantitative assessment of Quality of Life (QoL), while following the WHOQOL model. It is an in-depth resource describing and examining state-of-the-art, minimally obtrusive, ubiquitous technologies. Highlighting the required factors for adoption and scaling of technology-enabled methods and tools for QoL assessment, it also describes how these technologies can be leveraged for behavior change, disease prevention, health management and long-term QoL enhancement in populations at large. Quantifying Quality of Life: Incorporating Daily Life into Medicine fills a gap in the field of QoL by providing assessment methods, techniques and tools. These assessments differ from the current methods that are now mostly infrequent, subjective, qualitative, memory-based, context-poor and sparse. Therefore, it is an ideal resource for physicians, physicians in training, software and hardware developers, computer scientists, data scientists, behavioural scientists, entrepreneurs, healthcare leaders and administrators who are seeking an up-to-date resource on this subject

Integrating passive ubiquitous surfaces into human-computer interaction

Mobile technologies enable people to interact with computers ubiquitously. This dissertation investigates how ordinary, ubiquitous surfaces can be integrated into human-computer interaction to extend the interaction space beyond the edge of the display. It turns out that acoustic and tactile features generated during an interaction can be combined to identify input events, the user, and the surface. In addition, it is shown that a heterogeneous distribution of different surfaces is particularly suitable for realizing versatile interaction modalities. However, privacy concerns must be considered when selecting sensors, and context can be crucial in determining whether and what interaction to perform.Mobile Technologien ermöglichen den Menschen eine allgegenwärtige Interaktion mit Computern. Diese Dissertation untersucht, wie gewöhnliche, allgegenwärtige Oberflächen in die Mensch-Computer-Interaktion integriert werden können, um den Interaktionsraum über den Rand des Displays hinaus zu erweitern. Es stellt sich heraus, dass akustische und taktile Merkmale, die während einer Interaktion erzeugt werden, kombiniert werden können, um Eingabeereignisse, den Benutzer und die Oberfläche zu identifizieren. Darüber hinaus wird gezeigt, dass eine heterogene Verteilung verschiedener Oberflächen besonders geeignet ist, um vielfältige Interaktionsmodalitäten zu realisieren. Bei der Auswahl der Sensoren müssen jedoch Datenschutzaspekte berücksichtigt werden, und der Kontext kann entscheidend dafür sein, ob und welche Interaktion durchgeführt werden soll

Aplicaciones de sensores vestibles y teléfonos inteligentes en el bienestar personal: Cuantificación de la actividad física y control de la práctica de mindfulness

El teléfono móvil inteligente (Smartphone) se ha convertido en un dispositivo con una amplia aceptación entre la población y ha logrado cambiar nuestras vidas en muchos aspectos. Sus aplicaciones van más allá de la simple comunicación, llegando a acuñarse en los últimos años el término “mHealth”, como referencia al uso de dispositivos móviles (en particular teléfonos), en el ámbito de la salud.En el ámbito de la salud, los teléfonos móviles pueden servir como: Elementos de aprendizaje y formación, a través de la visualización de texto, vídeos, audios, etc. Elementos de monitorización, a través de los propios sensores del móvil (geolocalización, sensores inerciales), de sensores que se conectan al móvil o mediante encuestas automatizadas. De una forma u otra, el teléfono inteligente aporta varias características, entre otras, la posibilidad de recopilar una gran cantidad de datos, muchas veces de forma ubicua y transparente al usuario. La posibilidad de extraer información relevante de esos datos es un gran campo de investigación, con fundamento en aspectos como sensores vestibles, reconocimiento de patrones y aprendizaje automático, “big data”, entre otros.La capacidad de monitorización de los teléfonos inteligentes se complementa con los sensores vestibles (wearable) no integrados en el propio teléfono inteligente, que en diversos formatos permiten la medida de variables físicas y fisiológicas. Generalmente suelen ser complementos, componentes que se sujetan a la ropa, sensores integrados directamente en los tejidos u otros. En muchas ocasiones se conectan a una aplicación móvil para tratar y visualizar los resultados.En esta tesis se realizan varias aportaciones en el campo de la salud móvil y sensores vestibles, dentro de las actividades realizadas en el grupo EduQTech (grupo de referencia reconocido por la DGA ref. T49_17R) (EduQTech, 2018). En concreto se plantea avanzar en dos aplicaciones para bienestar: la cuantificación de la actividad física y el control de la práctica de mindfulness.Cuantificación de la actividad física: Para cuantificar la actividad física se ha utilizado el acelerómetro de un smartphone de gama media-baja (acelerómetros con un rango normal de ± 2g), el cual registra los movimientos realizados por el usuario. Posteriormente se ha hecho un análisis de los datos (creación de algoritmos) y los resultados se han comparado con los resultados aportados por un acelerómetro comercial dedicado para medir la actividad física (GT3X+, acelerómetro con un rango normal de ± 6g). Las recomendaciones de actividad física se establecen en función de la salida del acelerómetro en unidades llamadas “counts”. Nuestros resultados demuestran que es factible el uso de los acelerómetros incorporados en los smartphones comerciales. Uno de los algoritmos obtuvo una correlación Kappa ponderada de 0.874 (p-valor Control de la práctica de mindfulness: Mindfulness es una técnica de intervención basada en la meditación budista y que ha demostrado ser eficiente tanto en el mantenimiento del bienestar físico y mental personal, como en el apoyo a pacientes para el tratamiento de distintas enfermedades. Su monitorización puede ayudar a los profesionales a evaluar la eficacia de la práctica y, en consecuencia, aumentar los beneficios esperados de la misma, especialmente en el ámbito de la salud. En esta tesis se han desarrollado dos prototipos: El primer kit fue desarrollado para medir la estabilidad de los meditadores durante sus sesiones de mindfulness. En dicho estudio participaron 31 sujetos, de los cuales 27 no tenían experiencia meditando. Los resultados mostraron que no hubo diferencias significativas con respecto a qué ubicación era la mejor para medir la estabilidad salvo la región lumbar, que es menos sensible. Sin embargo, sí que se pudo ver que la cabeza y el dedo pulgar fueron los más sensibles a los movimientos de los practicantes. Además, se comprobó que el zafú (cojín de meditación) presenta una ligera ventaja sobre otros asientos. La medición del ritmo cardíaco y su variabilidad son también de gran importancia. La variabilidad del ritmo cardíaco es un indicador general de salud y varios estudios han mostrado que puede haber cambios durante la meditación. El kit propuesto para medir la variabilidad se basó en un sensor Amped usando el método de fotopletismiografía. En este estudio se contó con la participación de 10 meditadores expertos y 20 noveles, en el cual el objetivo era ver si había diferencias significativas entre los dos grupos. Los resultados mostraron que en los parámetros de la variabilidad de la frecuencia cardiaca SDNN, NN50, RMSSD, VLF y HF hay diferencias significativas con un p-valor <br /

Tai Chi and Mindfulness Training to Improve Balance in People with Multiple Sclerosis: A Community-Based Intervention Study

Introduction: Tai Chi and meditation have led to improved quality of life, and reduced fatigue and depressive symptoms in people with multiple sclerosis (MS). Tai Chi interventions have successfully improved balance, however the few studies evaluating meditation impact on motor skill improvement have reported conflicting results. Benefits of meditation on improving alertness and attention have been reported, but it is unknown whether these benefits might extend to physical balance. Objective: determine the impact of an 8-week Tai Chi or Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) intervention on physical balance, psychosocial wellbeing, and sensorimotor function; and whether benefits are retained after a washout period. Methods: N=8 participants (7F, 1M) ages 47.3±14, Patient Determined Disease Steps: 2.25±1.3, subtypes (5 RR, 2 PP, 1 SP) were assigned to either the Tai Chi or MBSR class. Three data collections occurred at: baseline, post 8-week intervention, and post 2-week washout. The average intervention practice time for all participants was 28.9±5.7 hours. Measures: Physical balance included quiet standing, narrow standing, forward reach and backwards lean trials, sit-to-stand (STS), and timed-up-and-go (TUG) trials obtained via APDM inertial sensors. Psychosocial data were obtained with fatigue, balance confidence, coping, and MSIS-29 questionnaires, and sensorimotor data included plantar vibration sensitivity and foot tapping performance. Results: Both groups improved their forwards reach characteristics, STS, fatigue severity and MSIS-29 disease impact scores. Additionally, Tai Chi may improve backwards lean characteristics, balance confidence, coping, and foot tapping inter-tap interval and coefficient of variance. MBSR may beneficially impact standing with narrow base of support. Both groups retained some beneficial postural characteristics, fatigue scores, MSIS-29 Disease impact, and STS ability. Additionally, Tai Chi retained balance confidence and coping, and some foot tapping parameters. Conclusion: Both interventions appear to improve physical balance, psychosocial wellbeing, and sensorimotor function; however further research is needed to clarify if these trends remain within a larger population

Smart Sensors for Healthcare and Medical Applications

This book focuses on new sensing technologies, measurement techniques, and their applications in medicine and healthcare. Specifically, the book briefly describes the potential of smart sensors in the aforementioned applications, collecting 24 articles selected and published in the Special Issue “Smart Sensors for Healthcare and Medical Applications”. We proposed this topic, being aware of the pivotal role that smart sensors can play in the improvement of healthcare services in both acute and chronic conditions as well as in prevention for a healthy life and active aging. The articles selected in this book cover a variety of topics related to the design, validation, and application of smart sensors to healthcare