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Sensors for Ambient Assisted Living, Ubiquitous and Mobile Health

A special issue of Sensors (ISSN 1424-8220). This special issue belongs to the section "Physical Sensors".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (1 May 2017) | Viewed by 88086

Special Issue Editors


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Guest Editor
Centre for Research and Technology Hellas, Information Technologies Institute, 6th Km Charilaou-Thermi, 57001 Thessaloniki, Greece
Interests: semantic multimedia analysis; indexing and retrieval; social media and big data analysis; knowledge structures; reasoning and personalization for multimedia applications; e-health and environmental applications
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

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Guest Editor
Centre for Research & Technology Hellas, Information Technologies Institute 6th km, Charilaou-Thermi Rd, P.O. Box 60361, GR 57001 Thermi, Thessaloniki, Greece
Interests: intelligent autonomous systems; semantic web service matching and composition; ambient intelligence in environmental applications and ambient assisted living; middleware and wireless sensor networks in the internet of things

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Guest Editor
Associate Professor, Department of Information Studies, University College London, Gower Street, London WC1E 6BT, UK
Interests: knowledge representation; nonmonotonic reasoning; argumentation; semantic web; ambient intelligence
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

This Special Issue of Sensors, entitled “Sensors in Ambient Assisted Living, Ubiquitous and Mobile Health” focuses on the use of sensors in Ambient Intelligence, as well as in pervasive and mobile technologies for healthcare. As we transition from the world of personal computing, powerful, compact devices are distributed across the user’s environment, enabling the contextualized enrichment of business processes with the ability to sense, process and combine data, and turning our living and working environments into intelligent spaces. This interconnection of devices, machines and “things” enables the dynamic generation, analysis and communication of multiple data types, leading to an increase in the operational efficiency and effectiveness of existing business. Although some open platforms address the integration of devices and services to deliver intelligent solutions, several challenges still need to be overcome for the deployment of Ambient Intelligence technologies relevant to the heterogeneity of hardware, communication protocols, interfaces, context-awareness, knowledge representation and interpretation.

Such technologies promise breakthroughs, particularly in the field of healthcare. The ever-ageing population, together with the prevalence of chronic, hard-to-treat diseases, such as dementia, call for eHealth solutions that reduce cost, increase Quality of Life and retain an active role in society by postponing hospitalization.

This Special Issue aims to explore emerging research topics of interest concerning all aspects of integrating sensors and the Internet of Things (IoT) at the heart of Ambient Assisted Living, as well as pervasive and mobile health. The main objective is to stimulate original, unpublished research addressing the integration of sensors; mobile, wearable and biomedical devices; IoT platform convergence and dissemination; and the context-aware and real-time acquisition, storage, mining and interpretation of data for building healthcare applications.

Specifically, its scope includes:

  • Integration of communication protocols, sensor platforms and IoT for health
  • Sensors in ubiquitous, pervasive and mobile healthcare solutions
  • Sensors for Ambient Assisted Living
  • Sensor interoperability, context-awareness, representation and reasoning with sensor data in eHealth
  • Biomedical devices, clinical, preventive, early-diagnosis, patient monitoring and public health applications of sensors
  • Acquisition, transmission, representation, storage, management and mining of healthcare information
  • Sensor-enabled activity recognition, physiological monitoring and biometrics
  • Wearable, ambient, fitness and lifestyle sensing for healthcare
  • Smart homes, buildings and cities for health and well-being
  • Sensor applications in clinical trials, short or long term hospitalization

Dr. Ioannis Kompatsiaris
Dr. Thanos G. Stavropoulos
Dr. Antonis Bikakis
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sensors is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Published Papers (12 papers)

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Research

1760 KiB  
Article
Online Recognition of Daily Activities by Color-Depth Sensing and Knowledge Models
by Carlos Fernando Crispim-Junior, Alvaro Gómez Uría, Carola Strumia, Michal Koperski, Alexandra König, Farhood Negin, Serhan Cosar, Anh Tuan Nghiem, Duc Phu Chau, Guillaume Charpiat and Francois Bremond
Sensors 2017, 17(7), 1528; https://doi.org/10.3390/s17071528 - 29 Jun 2017
Cited by 13 | Viewed by 4583
Abstract
Visual activity recognition plays a fundamental role in several research fields as a way to extract semantic meaning of images and videos. Prior work has mostly focused on classification tasks, where a label is given for a video clip. However, real life scenarios [...] Read more.
Visual activity recognition plays a fundamental role in several research fields as a way to extract semantic meaning of images and videos. Prior work has mostly focused on classification tasks, where a label is given for a video clip. However, real life scenarios require a method to browse a continuous video flow, automatically identify relevant temporal segments and classify them accordingly to target activities. This paper proposes a knowledge-driven event recognition framework to address this problem. The novelty of the method lies in the combination of a constraint-based ontology language for event modeling with robust algorithms to detect, track and re-identify people using color-depth sensing (Kinect® sensor). This combination enables to model and recognize longer and more complex events and to incorporate domain knowledge and 3D information into the same models. Moreover, the ontology-driven approach enables human understanding of system decisions and facilitates knowledge transfer across different scenes. The proposed framework is evaluated with real-world recordings of seniors carrying out unscripted, daily activities at hospital observation rooms and nursing homes. Results demonstrated that the proposed framework outperforms state-of-the-art methods in a variety of activities and datasets, and it is robust to variable and low-frame rate recordings. Further work will investigate how to extend the proposed framework with uncertainty management techniques to handle strong occlusion and ambiguous semantics, and how to exploit it to further support medicine on the timely diagnosis of cognitive disorders, such as Alzheimer’s disease. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sensors for Ambient Assisted Living, Ubiquitous and Mobile Health)
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4509 KiB  
Article
Development of a Computer Writing System Based on EOG
by Alberto López, Francisco Ferrero, David Yangüela, Constantina Álvarez and Octavian Postolache
Sensors 2017, 17(7), 1505; https://doi.org/10.3390/s17071505 - 26 Jun 2017
Cited by 22 | Viewed by 8471
Abstract
The development of a novel computer writing system based on eye movements is introduced herein. A system of these characteristics requires the consideration of three subsystems: (1) A hardware device for the acquisition and transmission of the signals generated by eye movement to [...] Read more.
The development of a novel computer writing system based on eye movements is introduced herein. A system of these characteristics requires the consideration of three subsystems: (1) A hardware device for the acquisition and transmission of the signals generated by eye movement to the computer; (2) A software application that allows, among other functions, data processing in order to minimize noise and classify signals; and (3) A graphical interface that allows the user to write text easily on the computer screen using eye movements only. This work analyzes these three subsystems and proposes innovative and low cost solutions for each one of them. This computer writing system was tested with 20 users and its efficiency was compared to a traditional virtual keyboard. The results have shown an important reduction in the time spent on writing, which can be very useful, especially for people with severe motor disorders. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sensors for Ambient Assisted Living, Ubiquitous and Mobile Health)
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1404 KiB  
Article
Major Depression Detection from EEG Signals Using Kernel Eigen-Filter-Bank Common Spatial Patterns
by Shih-Cheng Liao, Chien-Te Wu, Hao-Chuan Huang, Wei-Teng Cheng and Yi-Hung Liu
Sensors 2017, 17(6), 1385; https://doi.org/10.3390/s17061385 - 14 Jun 2017
Cited by 120 | Viewed by 9056
Abstract
Major depressive disorder (MDD) has become a leading contributor to the global burden of disease; however, there are currently no reliable biological markers or physiological measurements for efficiently and effectively dissecting the heterogeneity of MDD. Here we propose a novel method based on [...] Read more.
Major depressive disorder (MDD) has become a leading contributor to the global burden of disease; however, there are currently no reliable biological markers or physiological measurements for efficiently and effectively dissecting the heterogeneity of MDD. Here we propose a novel method based on scalp electroencephalography (EEG) signals and a robust spectral-spatial EEG feature extractor called kernel eigen-filter-bank common spatial pattern (KEFB-CSP). The KEFB-CSP first filters the multi-channel raw EEG signals into a set of frequency sub-bands covering the range from theta to gamma bands, then spatially transforms the EEG signals of each sub-band from the original sensor space to a new space where the new signals (i.e., CSPs) are optimal for the classification between MDD and healthy controls, and finally applies the kernel principal component analysis (kernel PCA) to transform the vector containing the CSPs from all frequency sub-bands to a lower-dimensional feature vector called KEFB-CSP. Twelve patients with MDD and twelve healthy controls participated in this study, and from each participant we collected 54 resting-state EEGs of 6 s length (5 min and 24 s in total). Our results show that the proposed KEFB-CSP outperforms other EEG features including the powers of EEG frequency bands, and fractal dimension, which had been widely applied in previous EEG-based depression detection studies. The results also reveal that the 8 electrodes from the temporal areas gave higher accuracies than other scalp areas. The KEFB-CSP was able to achieve an average EEG classification accuracy of 81.23% in single-trial analysis when only the 8-electrode EEGs of the temporal area and a support vector machine (SVM) classifier were used. We also designed a voting-based leave-one-participant-out procedure to test the participant-independent individual classification accuracy. The voting-based results show that the mean classification accuracy of about 80% can be achieved by the KEFP-CSP feature and the SVM classifier with only several trials, and this level of accuracy seems to become stable as more trials (i.e., <7 trials) are used. These findings therefore suggest that the proposed method has a great potential for developing an efficient (required only a few 6-s EEG signals from the 8 electrodes over the temporal) and effective (~80% classification accuracy) EEG-based brain-computer interface (BCI) system which may, in the future, help psychiatrists provide individualized and effective treatments for MDD patients. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sensors for Ambient Assisted Living, Ubiquitous and Mobile Health)
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1812 KiB  
Article
Unsupervised Machine Learning for Developing Personalised Behaviour Models Using Activity Data
by Laura Fiorini, Filippo Cavallo, Paolo Dario, Alexandra Eavis and Praminda Caleb-Solly
Sensors 2017, 17(5), 1034; https://doi.org/10.3390/s17051034 - 04 May 2017
Cited by 28 | Viewed by 6842 | Correction
Abstract
The goal of this study is to address two major issues that undermine the large scale deployment of smart home sensing solutions in people’s homes. These include the costs associated with having to install and maintain a large number of sensors, and the [...] Read more.
The goal of this study is to address two major issues that undermine the large scale deployment of smart home sensing solutions in people’s homes. These include the costs associated with having to install and maintain a large number of sensors, and the pragmatics of annotating numerous sensor data streams for activity classification. Our aim was therefore to propose a method to describe individual users’ behavioural patterns starting from unannotated data analysis of a minimal number of sensors and a ”blind” approach for activity recognition. The methodology included processing and analysing sensor data from 17 older adults living in community-based housing to extract activity information at different times of the day. The findings illustrate that 55 days of sensor data from a sensor configuration comprising three sensors, and extracting appropriate features including a “busyness” measure, are adequate to build robust models which can be used for clustering individuals based on their behaviour patterns with a high degree of accuracy (>85%). The obtained clusters can be used to describe individual behaviour over different times of the day. This approach suggests a scalable solution to support optimising the personalisation of care by utilising low-cost sensing and analysis. This approach could be used to track a person’s needs over time and fine-tune their care plan on an ongoing basis in a cost-effective manner. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sensors for Ambient Assisted Living, Ubiquitous and Mobile Health)
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2217 KiB  
Article
Using Tri-Axial Accelerometry in Daily Elite Swim Training Practice
by Sander Ganzevles, Rik Vullings, Peter Jan Beek, Hein Daanen and Martin Truijens
Sensors 2017, 17(5), 990; https://doi.org/10.3390/s17050990 - 29 Apr 2017
Cited by 17 | Viewed by 5896
Abstract
Background: Coaches in elite swimming carefully design the training programs of their swimmers and are keen on achieving strict adherence to those programs by their athletes. At present, coaches usually monitor the compliance of their swimmers to the training program with a [...] Read more.
Background: Coaches in elite swimming carefully design the training programs of their swimmers and are keen on achieving strict adherence to those programs by their athletes. At present, coaches usually monitor the compliance of their swimmers to the training program with a stopwatch. However, this measurement clearly limits the monitoring possibilities and is subject to human error. Therefore, the present study was designed to examine the reliability and practical usefulness of tri-axial accelerometers for monitoring lap time, stroke count and stroke rate in swimming. Methods: In the first part of the study, a 1200 m warm-up swimming routine was measured in 13 elite swimmers using tri-axial accelerometers and synchronized video recordings. Reliability was determined using the typical error of measurement (TEM) as well as a Bland-Altman analysis. In the second part, training compliance both within and between carefully prescribed training sessions was assessed in four swimmers in order to determine the practical usefulness of the adopted accelerometric approach. In these sessions, targets were set for lap time and stroke count by the coach. Results: The results indicated high reliability for lap time (TEM = 0.26 s, bias = 0.74 [0.56 0.91] with limits of agreement (LoA) from −1.20 [−1.50 −0.90] to 2.70 [2.40 3.00]), stroke count (TEM 0.73 strokes, bias = 0.46 [0.32 0.60] with LoA from −1.70 [−1.94 −1.46] to 2.60 [2.36 2.84]) and stroke rate (TEM 0.72 str∙min−1, bias = −0.13 [−0.20 −0.06] with LoA from −2.20 [−2.32 −2.08] to 1.90 [1.78 2.02]), while the results for the monitoring of training compliance demonstrated the practical usefulness of our approach in daily swimming training. Conclusions: The daily training of elite swimmers can be accurately and reliably monitored using tri-axial accelerometers. They provide the coach with more useful information to guide and control the training process than hand-clocked times. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sensors for Ambient Assisted Living, Ubiquitous and Mobile Health)
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5086 KiB  
Article
homeSound: Real-Time Audio Event Detection Based on High Performance Computing for Behaviour and Surveillance Remote Monitoring
by Rosa Ma Alsina-Pagès, Joan Navarro, Francesc Alías and Marcos Hervás
Sensors 2017, 17(4), 854; https://doi.org/10.3390/s17040854 - 13 Apr 2017
Cited by 63 | Viewed by 8646
Abstract
The consistent growth in human life expectancy during the recent years has driven governments and private organizations to increase the efforts in caring for the eldest segment of the population. These institutions have built hospitals and retirement homes that have been rapidly overfilled, [...] Read more.
The consistent growth in human life expectancy during the recent years has driven governments and private organizations to increase the efforts in caring for the eldest segment of the population. These institutions have built hospitals and retirement homes that have been rapidly overfilled, making their associated maintenance and operating costs prohibitive. The latest advances in technology and communications envisage new ways to monitor those people with special needs at their own home, increasing their quality of life in a cost-affordable way. The purpose of this paper is to present an Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) platform able to analyze, identify, and detect specific acoustic events happening in daily life environments, which enables the medic staff to remotely track the status of every patient in real-time. Additionally, this tele-care proposal is validated through a proof-of-concept experiment that takes benefit of the capabilities of the NVIDIA Graphical Processing Unit running on a Jetson TK1 board to locally detect acoustic events. Conducted experiments demonstrate the feasibility of this approach by reaching an overall accuracy of 82% when identifying a set of 14 indoor environment events related to the domestic surveillance and patients’ behaviour monitoring field. Obtained results encourage practitioners to keep working in this direction, and enable health care providers to remotely track the status of their patients in real-time with non-invasive methods. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sensors for Ambient Assisted Living, Ubiquitous and Mobile Health)
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4193 KiB  
Article
A Waist-Worn Inertial Measurement Unit for Long-Term Monitoring of Parkinson’s Disease Patients
by Daniel Rodríguez-Martín, Carlos Pérez-López, Albert Samà, Andreu Català, Joan Manuel Moreno Arostegui, Joan Cabestany, Berta Mestre, Sheila Alcaine, Anna Prats, María De la Cruz Crespo and Àngels Bayés
Sensors 2017, 17(4), 827; https://doi.org/10.3390/s17040827 - 11 Apr 2017
Cited by 31 | Viewed by 7519
Abstract
Inertial measurement units (IMUs) are devices used, among other fields, in health applications, since they are light, small and effective. More concretely, IMUs have been demonstrated to be useful in the monitoring of motor symptoms of Parkinson’s disease (PD). In this sense, most [...] Read more.
Inertial measurement units (IMUs) are devices used, among other fields, in health applications, since they are light, small and effective. More concretely, IMUs have been demonstrated to be useful in the monitoring of motor symptoms of Parkinson’s disease (PD). In this sense, most of previous works have attempted to assess PD symptoms in controlled environments or short tests. This paper presents the design of an IMU, called 9 × 3, that aims to assess PD symptoms, enabling the possibility to perform a map of patients’ symptoms at their homes during long periods. The device is able to acquire and store raw inertial data for artificial intelligence algorithmic training purposes. Furthermore, the presented IMU enables the real-time execution of the developed and embedded learning models. Results show the great flexibility of the 9 × 3, storing inertial information and algorithm outputs, sending messages to external devices and being able to detect freezing of gait and bradykinetic gait. Results obtained in 12 patients exhibit a sensitivity and specificity over 80%. Additionally, the system enables working 23 days (at waking hours) with a 1200 mAh battery and a sampling rate of 50 Hz, opening up the possibility to be used for other applications like wellbeing and sports. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sensors for Ambient Assisted Living, Ubiquitous and Mobile Health)
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6453 KiB  
Article
A Cardiac Early Warning System with Multi Channel SCG and ECG Monitoring for Mobile Health
by Prasan Kumar Sahoo, Hiren Kumar Thakkar and Ming-Yih Lee
Sensors 2017, 17(4), 711; https://doi.org/10.3390/s17040711 - 29 Mar 2017
Cited by 65 | Viewed by 11393
Abstract
Use of information and communication technology such as smart phone, smart watch, smart glass and portable health monitoring devices for healthcare services has made Mobile Health (mHealth) an emerging research area. Coronary Heart Disease (CHD) is considered as a leading cause of death [...] Read more.
Use of information and communication technology such as smart phone, smart watch, smart glass and portable health monitoring devices for healthcare services has made Mobile Health (mHealth) an emerging research area. Coronary Heart Disease (CHD) is considered as a leading cause of death world wide and an increasing number of people die prematurely due to CHD. Under such circumstances, there is a growing demand for a reliable cardiac monitoring system to catch the intermittent abnormalities and detect critical cardiac behaviors which lead to sudden death. Use of mobile devices to collect Electrocardiography (ECG), Seismocardiography (SCG) data and efficient analysis of those data can monitor a patient’s cardiac activities for early warning. This paper presents a novel cardiac data acquisition method and combined analysis of Electrocardiography (ECG) and multi channel Seismocardiography (SCG) data. An early warning system is implemented to monitor the cardiac activities of a person and accuracy assessment of the early warning system is conducted for the ECG data only. The assessment shows 88% accuracy and effectiveness of our proposed analysis, which implies the viability and applicability of the proposed early warning system. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sensors for Ambient Assisted Living, Ubiquitous and Mobile Health)
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2062 KiB  
Article
Investigation on Inter-Limb Coordination and Motion Stability, Intensity and Complexity of Trunk and Limbs during Hands-Knees Crawling in Human Adults
by Shenglan Ma, Xiang Chen, Shuai Cao, Yi Yu and Xu Zhang
Sensors 2017, 17(4), 692; https://doi.org/10.3390/s17040692 - 28 Mar 2017
Cited by 13 | Viewed by 5276
Abstract
This study aimed to investigate the inter-limb coordination pattern and the stability, intensity, and complexity of the trunk and limbs motions in human crawling under different speeds. Thirty healthy human adults finished hands-knees crawling trials on a treadmill at six different speeds (from [...] Read more.
This study aimed to investigate the inter-limb coordination pattern and the stability, intensity, and complexity of the trunk and limbs motions in human crawling under different speeds. Thirty healthy human adults finished hands-knees crawling trials on a treadmill at six different speeds (from 1 km/h to 2.5 km/h). A home-made multi-channel acquisition system consisting of five 3-axis accelerometers (ACC) and four force sensors was used for the data collection. Ipsilateral phase lag was used to represent inter-limb coordination pattern during crawling and power, harmonic ratio, and sample entropy of acceleration signals were adopted to depict the motion intensity, stability, and complexity of trunk and limbs respectively. Our results revealed some relationships between inter-limb coordination patterns and the stability and complexity of trunk movement. Trot-like crawling pattern was found to be the most stable and regular one at low speed in the view of trunk movement, and no-limb-pairing pattern showed the lowest stability and the greatest complexity at high speed. These relationships could be used to explain why subjects tended to avoid no-limb-pairing pattern when speed was over 2 km/h no matter which coordination type they used at low speeds. This also provided the evidence that the central nervous system (CNS) chose a stable inter-limb coordination pattern to keep the body safe and avoid tumbling. Although considerable progress has been made in the study of four-limb locomotion, much less is known about the reasons for the variety of inter-limb coordination. The research results of the exploration on the inter-limb coordination pattern choice during crawling from the standpoint of the motion stability, intensity, and complexity of trunk and limbs sheds light on the underlying motor control strategy of the human CNS and has important significance in the fields of clinical diagnosis, rehabilitation engineering, and kinematics research. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sensors for Ambient Assisted Living, Ubiquitous and Mobile Health)
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7719 KiB  
Article
Development of Portable Digital Radiography System with a Device for Monitoring X-ray Source-Detector Angle and Its Application in Chest Imaging
by Tae-Hoon Kim, Dong-Woon Heo, Chang-Won Jeong, Jong-Hyun Ryu, Hong Young Jun, Seung-Jun Han, Taeuk Ha and Kwon-Ha Yoon
Sensors 2017, 17(3), 531; https://doi.org/10.3390/s17030531 - 07 Mar 2017
Cited by 3 | Viewed by 9074
Abstract
This study developed a device measuring the X-ray source-detector angle (SDA) and evaluated the imaging performance for diagnosing chest images. The SDA device consisted of Arduino, an accelerometer and gyro sensor, and a Bluetooth module. The SDA values were compared with the values [...] Read more.
This study developed a device measuring the X-ray source-detector angle (SDA) and evaluated the imaging performance for diagnosing chest images. The SDA device consisted of Arduino, an accelerometer and gyro sensor, and a Bluetooth module. The SDA values were compared with the values of a digital angle meter. The performance of the portable digital radiography (PDR) was evaluated using the signal-to-noise (SNR), contrast-to-noise ratio (CNR), spatial resolution, distortion and entrance surface dose (ESD). According to different angle degrees, five anatomical landmarks were assessed using a five-point scale. The mean SNR and CNR were 182.47 and 141.43. The spatial resolution and ESD were 3.17 lp/mm (157 μm) and 0.266 mGy. The angle values of the SDA device were not significantly difference as compared to those of the digital angle meter. In chest imaging, the SNR and CNR values were not significantly different according to the different angle degrees. The visibility scores of the border of the heart, the fifth rib and the scapula showed significant differences according to different angles (p < 0.05), whereas the scores of the clavicle and first rib were not significant. It is noticeable that the increase in the SDA degree was consistent with the increases of the distortion and visibility score. The proposed PDR with a SDA device would be useful for application in the clinical radiography setting according to the standard radiography guidelines. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sensors for Ambient Assisted Living, Ubiquitous and Mobile Health)
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4971 KiB  
Article
Dynamic Context-Aware Event Recognition Based on Markov Logic Networks
by Fagui Liu, Dacheng Deng and Ping Li
Sensors 2017, 17(3), 491; https://doi.org/10.3390/s17030491 - 02 Mar 2017
Cited by 11 | Viewed by 5416
Abstract
Event recognition in smart spaces is an important and challenging task. Most existing approaches for event recognition purely employ either logical methods that do not handle uncertainty, or probabilistic methods that can hardly manage the representation of structured information. To overcome these limitations, [...] Read more.
Event recognition in smart spaces is an important and challenging task. Most existing approaches for event recognition purely employ either logical methods that do not handle uncertainty, or probabilistic methods that can hardly manage the representation of structured information. To overcome these limitations, especially in the situation where the uncertainty of sensing data is dynamically changing over the time, we propose a multi-level information fusion model for sensing data and contextual information, and also present a corresponding method to handle uncertainty for event recognition based on Markov logic networks (MLNs) which combine the expressivity of first order logic (FOL) and the uncertainty disposal of probabilistic graphical models (PGMs). Then we put forward an algorithm for updating formula weights in MLNs to deal with data dynamics. Experiments on two datasets from different scenarios are conducted to evaluate the proposed approach. The results show that our approach (i) provides an effective way to recognize events by using the fusion of uncertain data and contextual information based on MLNs and (ii) outperforms the original MLNs-based method in dealing with dynamic data. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sensors for Ambient Assisted Living, Ubiquitous and Mobile Health)
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3976 KiB  
Article
Significant Change Spotting for Periodic Human Motion Segmentation of Cleaning Tasks Using Wearable Sensors
by Kai-Chun Liu and Chia-Tai Chan
Sensors 2017, 17(1), 187; https://doi.org/10.3390/s17010187 - 19 Jan 2017
Cited by 9 | Viewed by 4735
Abstract
The proportion of the aging population is rapidly increasing around the world, which will cause stress on society and healthcare systems. In recent years, advances in technology have created new opportunities for automatic activities of daily living (ADL) monitoring to improve the quality [...] Read more.
The proportion of the aging population is rapidly increasing around the world, which will cause stress on society and healthcare systems. In recent years, advances in technology have created new opportunities for automatic activities of daily living (ADL) monitoring to improve the quality of life and provide adequate medical service for the elderly. Such automatic ADL monitoring requires reliable ADL information on a fine-grained level, especially for the status of interaction between body gestures and the environment in the real-world. In this work, we propose a significant change spotting mechanism for periodic human motion segmentation during cleaning task performance. A novel approach is proposed based on the search for a significant change of gestures, which can manage critical technical issues in activity recognition, such as continuous data segmentation, individual variance, and category ambiguity. Three typical machine learning classification algorithms are utilized for the identification of the significant change candidate, including a Support Vector Machine (SVM), k-Nearest Neighbors (kNN), and Naive Bayesian (NB) algorithm. Overall, the proposed approach achieves 96.41% in the F1-score by using the SVM classifier. The results show that the proposed approach can fulfill the requirement of fine-grained human motion segmentation for automatic ADL monitoring. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sensors for Ambient Assisted Living, Ubiquitous and Mobile Health)
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