Searching for characteristic patterns in time series is a topic addressed for decades by the research community. Conventional subsequence matching techniques usually rely on the definition of a target template pattern and a searching method for detecting similar patterns. However, the intrinsic variability of time series introduces changes in patterns, either morphologically and temporally, making such techniques not as accurate as desired. Intending to improve segmentation performances, in this paper, we proposed a Mask-based Neural Network (NN) which is capable of extracting desired patterns of interest from long time series, without using any predefined template. The proposed NN has been validated, alongside a subsequence matching algorithm, in two datasets: clinical (electrocardiogram) and human activity (inertial sensors). Moreover, the reduced dimension of the data in the latter dataset led to the application of transfer learning and data augmentation techniques to reach model convergence. The results have shown the proposed model achieved better segmentation performances than the baseline one, in both domains, reaching average Precision and Recall scores of 99.0% and 97.5% (clinical domain), along with 77.0% and 71.4% (human activity domain), introducing Neural Networks and Transfer Learning as promising alternatives for pattern searching in time series.

No abstract

Musculoskeletal disorders (MSD) are a highly prevalent work-related health problem. Biomechanical exposure to hazardous postures during work is a risk factor for the development of MSD. This study focused on developing an inertial sensor-based approach to evaluate posture in industrial contexts, particularly in automotive assembly lines. The analysis was divided into two stages: 1) a comparative study of joint angles calculated during movements of the upper body segments using the proposed motion tracking framework and the ones provided by a state-of-the-art inertial motion capture system and 2) a work-related posture risk evaluation of operators working in an automative assembly line. For the comparative study, we selected data collected in laboratory (N = 8 participants) and assembly line settings (N = 9 participants), while for the work-related posture risk evaluation, we only considered data acquired within the automotive assembly line. The results revealed that the proposed framework could be applied to track industrial tasks movements performed on the sagittal plane, and the posture evaluation uncovered posture risk differences among different operators that are not considered in traditional posture risk assessment instruments.

As long as the COVID-19 pandemic is still active in most countries worldwide, rapid diagnostic continues to be crucial to mitigate the impact of seasonal infection waves. Commercialized rapid antigen self-tests proved they cannot handle the most demanding periods, lacking availability and leading to cost rises. Thus, developing a non-invasive, costless, and more decentralized technology capable of giving people feedback about the COVID-19 infection probability would fill these gaps. This paper explores a sound-based analysis of vocal and respiratory audio data to achieve that objective. This work presents a modular data-centric Machine Learning pipeline for COVID-19 identification from voice and respiratory audio samples. Signals are processed to extract and classify relevant segments that contain informative events, such as coughing or breathing. Temporal, amplitude, spectral, cepstral, and phonetic features are extracted from audio along with available metadata for COVID-19 identification. Audio augmentation and data balancing techniques are used to mitigate class disproportionality. The open-access Coswara and COVID-19 Sounds datasets were used to test the performance of the proposed architecture. Obtained sensitivity scores ranged from 60.00% to 80.00% in Coswara and from 51.43% to 77.14% in COVID-19 Sounds. Although previous works report higher accuracy on COVID-19 detection, this research focused on a data-centric approach by validating the quality of the samples, segmenting the speech events, and exploring interpretable features with physiological meaning. As the pandemic evolves, its lessons must endure, and pipelines such as the proposed one will help prepare new stages where quick and easy disease identification is essential.

No abstract

No abstract

No abstract

No abstract