Observation of neuromotor development at an early stage of an infant’s life allows for early diagnosis of deficits and the beginning of the therapeutic process. General movement assessment is a method of spontaneous movement observation, which is the foundation for contemporary attempts at objectification and computer-aided diagnosis based on video recordings’ analysis. The present study attempts to automatically detect writhing movements, one of the normal general movement categories presented by newborns in the first weeks of life. A set of 31 recordings of newborns on the second and third day of life was divided by five experts into videos containing writhing movements (with occurrence time) and poor repertoire, characterized by a lower quality of movement in relation to the norm. Novel, objective pose-based features describing the scope, nature, and location of each limb’s movement are proposed. Three machine learning algorithms are evaluated in writhing movements’ detection in leave-one-out cross-validation for different feature extraction time windows and overlapping time. The experimental results make it possible to indicate the optimal parameters for which 80% accuracy was achieved. Based on automatically detected writhing movement percent in the video, infant movements are classified as writhing movements or poor repertoire with an area under the ROC (receiver operating characteristics) curve of 0.83.
Atlanto-axial instability (AAI) is a developmental anomaly often occurring in persons with Down's syndrome (DS). According to various reports, AAI affects from 6.8 to 27% of the population with DS. The aim of this review was to illustrate the issue of AAI with regard to the progressively changing state of scientific knowledge. The extended distance between the rear surface of the frontal arcus of the C1 cervical vertebra and the anterior surface of C2 cervical vertebra dens (anterior atlanto-odontoid distance, AAOD) indicates the occurrence of AAI and is detectable through Xray examination. Hypoplasia of the C2 dens, also detectable through X-ray examination, is another suggested risk factor for AAI. According to current data, the methodology of taking measurements is inconsistent, which leads to errors in interpretation. As research focusing on AAI was progressing, new data emerged from other studies on persons with DS, suggesting that neurological symptoms in persons with DS that indicated the occurrence of spinal cord compression were an important factor in medical imaging detection of AAI. One of the main arguments supporting this thesis is that in isolated cases
Background: The variation in functional independence of people with cerebral palsy (CP) allows us to state that there are various factors influencing the development of this independence. Objective: The purpose of this study was to analyze scientific articles focused on the search for factors influencing the functional independence of people with CP in the context of planning the rehabilitation procedures. Methods: The Medline, PubMed, EBSCO, and ScienceDirect electronic databases were searched for articles on factors influencing the functional independence of people with CP. Inclusion criteria used in searching were: articles in English and articles on people with CP. Exclusion criteria were: no access to full, free version of the article and articles published before 1990. Results: Three groups of factors influence the development of functional independence: internal, external, and task-based factors. External and task-based factors will be of greatest interest to specialists dealing with the rehabilitation of people with CP, as these are the factors which can most readily be changed, and thus offer the best opportunity to increase the independence of people with CP. Conclusions: Factors, which affect the functional independence of people with CP, are important in planning rehabilitation since they enable professionals in motor rehabilitation to be focused on factors that are amenable to change. Those factors allow professionals in the field of physical rehabilitation to be driven by goals, which are directly related to improving the functional independence of people with CP.
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