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Updated: Jun 4, 2026
Quantified Assessment of Infant's Gross Motor Abilities Using a Multisensor Wearable
Published on: May 17, 2024
Design and validation of surface-marker clusters for the quantification of joint rotations in general movements in
Luc Berthouze1, Margaret Mayston
1Centre for Computational Neuroscience and Robotics, University of Sussex, UK. L.Berthouze@sussex.ac.uk
Insights
New surface markers accurately measure infant joint rotations, aiding early detection of neurological motor disorders like cerebral palsy. This simplifies data collection for crucial infant movement analysis.
Area of Science:
- Biomedical Engineering
- Developmental Pediatrics
- Movement Science
Background:
- Reduced general movement complexity in infancy can indicate neurological motor disorders, including cerebral palsy.
- Quantitative analysis of infant movements is challenging due to difficulties in data acquisition during early life.
- Accurate measurement of joint rotations is essential for characterizing movement patterns.
Purpose of the Study:
- To design and validate novel surface-marker clusters for improved infant motion capture.
- To enable full quantification of joint rotations in early infancy.
- To overcome experimental limitations of current motion analysis techniques.
Main Methods:
- Development of bespoke surface-marker clusters for motion analysis.
- Validation using a soft-body dummy doll with simultaneous optical (Qualisys) and inertial (XSens) motion capture.
- Comparison of joint angles derived from optical versus inertial systems.
- Application of the technique to infants aged 1-5 months.
Main Results:
- The surface-marker approach demonstrated good agreement with inertial motion capture systems.
- The custom markers effectively quantified joint rotations, comparable to direct inertial readings.
- The method alleviates practical issues associated with traditional optical motion capture setups.
- Preliminary data from infants suggest feasibility for clinical application.
Conclusions:
- The validated surface-marker clusters provide a reliable method for quantifying infant joint rotations.
- This technique facilitates early and accurate diagnosis of movement disorders in infants.
- The approach offers a practical solution for motion analysis in early developmental stages.
- Enables quantitative assessment crucial for identifying conditions like cerebral palsy early on.
Abstract:
Lack of complexity in general movements in early infancy is an important marker of potential motor disorders of neurological origin, such as cerebral palsy. Quantitative approaches to characterising this complexity are hampered by experimental difficulties in recording from infants in their first few months of life. The aim of this study was to design and validate bespoke surface-marker clusters to facilitate data acquisition and enable full quantification of joint rotations. The clusters were validated by recording the controlled movements of a soft-body dummy doll simultaneously with an optical (Qualisys) and inertial (XSens) motion capture system. The angles estimated from the optical system were compared with those measured by the inertial system. We demonstrate that the surface-marker based approach compares well with the use of an inertial system to obtain "direct" readings of the rotations whilst alleviating the issues associated with the use of an optical motion capture system. We briefly report use of this technique in 1-5 month old infants. By enabling full quantification of joint rotation, use of the custom made markers could pave the way for early diagnosis of movement disorders.
