Automated Error Detection in Physiotherapy Training

Stud Health Technol Inform. 2018:248:164-171.

Abstract

Background: Manual skills teaching, such as physiotherapy education, requires immediate teacher feedback for the students during the learning process, which to date can only be performed by expert trainers.

Objectives: A machine-learning system trained only on correct performances to classify and score performed movements, to identify sources of errors in the movement and give feedback to the learner.

Methods: We acquire IMU and sEMG sensor data from a commercial-grade wearable device and construct an HMM-based model for gesture classification, scoring and feedback giving. We evaluate the model on publicly available and self-generated data of an exemplary movement pattern executions.

Results: The model achieves an overall accuracy of 90.71% on the public dataset and 98.9% on our dataset. An AUC of 0.99 for the ROC of the scoring method could be achieved to discriminate between correct and untrained incorrect executions.

Conclusion: The proposed system demonstrated its suitability for scoring and feedback in manual skills training.

Keywords: Education; Feedback; Gestures; Machine Learning; Wearable Technology; mHealth.

MeSH terms

  • Feedback*
  • Gestures
  • Humans
  • Learning
  • Machine Learning*
  • Movement
  • Physical Therapy Modalities / education*
  • Students