Children’s Fitness and Quality of Movement

Introduction: Movement is essential to life and plays a key role in development throughout childhood. Movement can be assessed by its quantity and quality. Movement is important to measure as it can aid early intervention. Current research suggests that global levels of fitness are declining, with a lack of research surrounding children’s natural fitness levels as they get older. Quantity of movement is commonly studied, however quality is becoming increasingly popular. A clear understanding of the methods of technology used to measure quality of movement is important as understanding this area will aid in designing appropriate interventions.Methods: This thesis comprises of two experimental studies. Study one is a repeated measures design using previously collected Swanlinx data to investigate how components of children’s fitness change over a one-year period. Study two is a scoping review investigating the measurement of quality of movement with technology in the form of MEM’s devices, while aiming to gain clarity on the definition of quality.Results: Study one revealed that children’s fitness levels increase across a one-year period, in all components of fitness, except sit and reach. Boys performed significantly better in all fitness components, apart from sit and reach. Study two demonstrated the broad field that is included under the term of quality, showing clarity is needed in this area. A large number of devices, movements and populations are being observed, with multiple definitions of quality which is dependent on the metrics collected.Conclusion: Study one concludes that children’s fitness levels increase over one-year, with boys performing better than girls. This can be used to understand children’s natural fitness levels and aid future interventions in participation. Study two concludes that there are multiple ways to assess quality of movement however a clear definition of the quality should be stated, aiding comparison of quality

Wearable Sensors in the Evaluation of Gait and Balance in Neurological Disorders

The aging population and the increased prevalence of neurological diseases have raised the issue of gait and balance disorders as a major public concern worldwide. Indeed, gait and balance disorders are responsible for a high healthcare and economic burden on society, thus, requiring new solutions to prevent harmful consequences. Recently, wearable sensors have provided new challenges and opportunities to address this issue through innovative diagnostic and therapeutic strategies. Accordingly, the book “Wearable Sensors in the Evaluation of Gait and Balance in Neurological Disorders” collects the most up-to-date information about the objective evaluation of gait and balance disorders, by means of wearable biosensors, in patients with various types of neurological diseases, including Parkinson’s disease, multiple sclerosis, stroke, traumatic brain injury, and cerebellar ataxia. By adopting wearable technologies, the sixteen original research articles and reviews included in this book offer an updated overview of the most recent approaches for the objective evaluation of gait and balance disorders

Motion-Based Video Games for Stroke Rehabilitation with Reduced Compensatory Motions

Stroke is the leading cause of long-term disability among adults in industrialized nations, with 80% of people who survive strokes experiencing motor disabilities. Recovery requires daily exercise with a high number of repetitions, often without therapist supervision. Motion-based video games can help motivate people with stroke to perform the necessary exercises to recover. We explore the design space of video games for stroke rehabilitation using Wii remotes and webcams as input devices, and share the lessons we learned about what makes games therapeutically useful. We demonstrate the feasibility of using games for home-based stroke therapy with a six-week case study. We show that exercise with games can help recovery even 17 years after the stroke, and share the lessons that we learned for game systems to be used at home as a part of outpatient therapy. As a major issue with home-based therapy, we identify that unsupervised exercises lead to compensatory motions that can impede recovery and create new health issues. We reliably detect torso compensation in shoulder exercises using a custom harness, and develop a game that meaningfully uses both exercise and compensation as inputs. We provide in-game feedback that reduces compensation in a number of ways. We evaluate alternative ways for reducing compensation in controlled experiments and show that using techniques from operant conditioning are effective in significantly reducing compensatory behavior compared to existing approaches