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Wide adoption of smartphones and availability of low-cost sensors has resulted in seamless and continuous monitoring of physiology, environment, and public health notifications. However, personalized digital health and patient empowerment can become a reality only if the complex multisensory and multimodal data is processed within the patient context. Contextual processing of patient data along with personalized medical knowledge can lead to actionable information for better and timely decisions. We present a system called kHealth capable of aggregating multisensory and multimodal data from sensors (passive sensing) and answers to questionnaire (active sensing) from patients with asthma. We present our preliminary data analysis comprising data collected from real patients highlighting the challenges in deploying such an application. The results show strong promise to derive actionable information using a combination of physiological indicators from active and passive sensors that can help doctors determine more precisely the cause, severity, and control level of asthma. Information synthesized from kHealth can be used to alert patients and caregivers for seeking timely clinical assistance to better manage asthma and improve their quality of life.

Humanitarian and public institutions are increasingly relying on data from social media sites to measure public attitude, and provide timely public engagement. Such engagement supports the exploration of public views on important social issues such as gender-based violence (GBV). In this study, we examine Big (Social) Data consisting of nearly fourteen million tweets collected from the Twitter platform over a period of ten months to analyze public opinion regarding GBV, highlighting the nature of tweeting practices by geographical location and gender. The exploitation of Big Data requires the techniques of Computational Social Science to mine insight from the corpus while accounting for the influence of both transient events and sociocultural factors. We reveal public awareness regarding GBV tolerance and suggest opportunities for intervention and the measurement of intervention effectiveness assisting both governmental and non-governmental organizations in policy development

This Paper presents dynamic parameter estimation of a three phase induction motor based on gravitational search algorithm (GSA) and Indirect Field Oriented Control (IFOC) methodology. The IFOC and Induction motor are modelled in MATLAB (Simulink) environment and the GSA algorithm has adopted for this parameter estimation purposes. The parameters like rotor resistance, time varying inductances etc. are estimated to have a better control over the running of the induction motor. It has been seen that the proposed method is efficient enough with enhanced accuracy in the estimation of parameters.

We present an approach for patient activity recognition in hospital rooms using depth data collected using a Kinect sensor. Depth sensors such as the Kinect ensure that activity segmentation is possible during day time as well as night while addressing the privacy concerns of patients. It also provides a technique to remotely monitor patients in a non-intrusive manner. An existing fall detection algorithm is currently generating fall alerts in several rooms in the University of Missouri Hospital (MUH). In this paper we describe a technique to reduce false alerts such as pillows falling off the bed or equipment movement. We do so by detecting the presence of the patient in the bed for the times when the fall alert is generated. We test our algorithm on 96 hours obtained in two hospital rooms from MUH.

This paper presents an approach to designing a strategy for the game of Geister using the three main research areas of computational intelligence. We use a goal-based fuzzy inference system to evaluate the utility of possible actions and a neural network to estimate unobservable features (the true natures of the opponent ghosts). Finally, we develop a coevolutionary algorithm to learn the parameters of the strategy. The resulting autonomous gameplay agent was entered in a global competition sponsored by the IEEE Computational Intelligence Society and finished second among eight participating teams.

Complex activities such as instrumental activities of daily living (IADLs) can be identified by creating a hierarchical model of fuzzy rules. In this work, we present a framework to model a specific IADL - "making the bed". For this activity recognition, the need for a three level Fuzzy Inference System (FIS) model is shown. Simple features such as bounding box parameters were extracted from the foreground images and combined with 3D features extracted from the Kinect depth data. This was then fed as input to the three layered FIS for further analysis. Data collected from several participants were tested and evaluated. Such a framework can be used to model several other IADLS as well as basic activities of daily living (ADLs). Analysis of ADLs can be used to compare daily patterns in older adults to measure changes in behavior. This can then be used to predict health changes to assist older adults in leading independent lifestyles for longer time periods.

The purpose of this study was to test the implementation of a fall detection and “rewind” privacy-protecting technique using the Microsoft ® Kinect ™ to not only detect but prevent falls from occurring in hospitalized patients. Kinect sensors were placed in six hospital rooms in a step-down unit and data were continuously logged. Prior to implementation with patients, three researchers performed a total of 18 falls (walking and then falling down or falling from the bed) and 17 non-fall events (crouching down, stooping down to tie shoe laces, and lying on the floor). All falls and non-falls were correctly identified using automated algorithms to process Kinect sensor data. During the first 8 months of data collection, processing methods were perfected to manage data and provide a “rewind” method to view events that led to falls for post-fall quality improvement process analyses. Preliminary data from this feasibility study show that using the Microsoft Kinect sensors provides detection of falls, fall risks, and facilitates quality improvement after falls in real hospital environments unobtrusively, while taking into account patient privacy. [ Journal of Gerontological Nursing, 40 (1), 13–17.]

We present algorithms to segment the activities of sitting and standing, and identify the regions of sit-to-stand (STS) transitions in a given image sequence. As a means of fall risk assessment, we propose methods to measure STS time using the 3-D modeling of a human body in voxel space as well as ellipse fitting algorithms and image features to capture orientation of the body. The proposed algorithms were tested on ten older adults with ages ranging from 83 to 97. Two techniques in combination yielded the best results, namely the voxel height in conjunction with the ellipse fit. Accurate STS time was computed on various STSs and verified using a marker-based motion capture system. This application can be used as part of a continuous video monitoring system in the homes of older adults and can provide valuable information to help detect fall risk and enable early interventions.

We present a unique occlusion and foreground overlap detection technique from depth sensor data using a fuzzy rule-based system. Features such as bounding box parameters and skeletonization were extracted from the foreground images and then input to the Fuzzy Inference System. Overlap and occlusion confidence measures were taken for each frame in the image sequence and compared against the extracted ground truth. This technique can help filter out occluded regions in the image sequence which, in an Eldercare environment, can then be used to compute accurate estimates of fall risk parameters such as stride time, stride length, and walking speed on a daily basis in in order to monitor the well-being of older adults in an ambient assisted living facility.

In this paper, we present results of an automatic vision-based gait assessment tool, using two cameras. Elderly residents from TigerPlace, a retirement community, were recruited to participate in the validation and test of the system in scripted scenarios representing everyday activities. The residents were first tested on a GAITRite mat, an electronic walkway that captures footfalls, and with inexpensive web cameras recording images. The extracted gait parameters from the camera system were compared with the GAITRite; excellent agreement was achieved. The residents then participated in the scenarios, with only the cameras recording. We found that the residents displayed different gait patterns during the realistic scenarios compared to the GAITRite runs. This finding provides support of the importance and advantage of continuous gait assessment in a daily living environment. Results on 4 elderly participants are included in the paper.