Analysis of Player Motion in Sport Matches

The system for analysis of player motion during sport matches, developed at University of Ljubljana will be presented. The system allows for non-intrusive measurement of positions of all players in indoor sports through whole match using only inexpensive video equipment - cameras mounted on the ceiling of the sports hall. Tracking process (obtaining trajectories from videos) is automatic and only supervised by operator, to initialize player positions at the beginning and correct the mistakes during the tracking. The software provides means for user friendly calibration of video data - using court markings of each supported sport (e.g. european handball, basketball, squash, tennis...) as reference coordinates. Manual annotations can be added, to complement the quantitative data. Software keeps synchronization between annotations and trajectory data and provides means to use custom annotation dictionaries. Due to calibration, the results are provided in court coordinates (meters, centimeters) and can be exported (synchronized with annotations in same file) for further analysis with any application (e.g. excel, SPSS). Software itself supports several kinds of graphical data presentations. If time allows, the software itself will be demonstrated with examples from different sports

Time-motion analysis in women’s team handball: importance of aerobic performance

Women’s handball is a sport, which has seen an accelerated development over the last decade. Data on movement patterns in combination with physiological demands are nearly nonexistent in the literature. The aim of this study was twofold: first, to analyze the horizontal movement pattern, including the sprint acceleration profiles, of individual female elite handball players and the corresponding heart rates (HRs) during a match and secondly to determine underlying correlations with individual aerobic performance. Players from one German First League team (n = 11) and the Norwegian National Team (n = 14) were studied during one match using the Sagit system for movement analysis and Polar HR monitoring for analysis of physiological demands. Mean HR during the match was 86 % of maximum HR (HRmax). With the exception of the goalkeepers (GKs, 78 % of HRmax), no position-specific differences could be detected. Total distance covered during the match was 4614 m (2066 m in GKs and 5251 m in field players (FPs)). Total distance consisted of 9.2 % sprinting, 26.7 % fast running, 28.8 % slow running, and 35.5 % walking. Mean velocity varied between 1.9 km/h (0.52 m/s) (GKs) and 4.2 km/h (1.17 m/s) (FPs, no position effect). Field players with a higher level of maximum oxygen uptake (V̇O2max) executed run activities with a higher velocity but comparable percentage of HRmax as compared to players with lower aerobic performance, independent of FP position. Acceleration profile depended on aerobic performance and the field player’s position. In conclusion, a high V̇O2max appears to be important in top-level international women’s handball. Sprint and endurance training should be conducted according to the specific demands of the player’s position

New genetic loci link adipose and insulin biology to body fat distribution.

Body fat distribution is a heritable trait and a well-established predictor of adverse metabolic outcomes, independent of overall adiposity. To increase our understanding of the genetic basis of body fat distribution and its molecular links to cardiometabolic traits, here we conduct genome-wide association meta-analyses of traits related to waist and hip circumferences in up to 224,459 individuals. We identify 49 loci (33 new) associated with waist-to-hip ratio adjusted for body mass index (BMI), and an additional 19 loci newly associated with related waist and hip circumference measures (P < 5 × 10(-8)). In total, 20 of the 49 waist-to-hip ratio adjusted for BMI loci show significant sexual dimorphism, 19 of which display a stronger effect in women. The identified loci were enriched for genes expressed in adipose tissue and for putative regulatory elements in adipocytes. Pathway analyses implicated adipogenesis, angiogenesis, transcriptional regulation and insulin resistance as processes affecting fat distribution, providing insight into potential pathophysiological mechanisms

Computer Vision System for Tracking Players in Sports Games

The development of computer vision system for tracking players in indoor team games is presented. Several image processing and tracking methods are described, along with camera calibration and lens distortion correction. The output of the system consists of spatiotemporal trajectories of the players, which can be further processed and analyzed by sport experts. In some critical situations the automatic tracking process must be manually interrupted. To correct miss-trackings, human supervision is required. Some experimental results are presented as well

Analysis and Pattern Detection on Large Amounts of Annotated Sport Motion Data Using Standard SQL

This paper proposes a inexpensive and flexible way to analyze large amounts of sport motion data, which are generated by automated motion tracking methods and complemented with manual annotations. A database, obtained by tracking and annotating over 100 squash plays was used. The goal was to find a way to automatically detect certain kinds of play, activities, certain predefined scenarios and to generate various statistics about these activities -- without hard-coding them in the executable code. We found that SQL-enabled databases provide a flexible and scalable solution to this problem. The examples of actual SQL queries for sport analysis are presented in the paper along with short tutorial on particular aspects of SQL language, which were exploited in our solution