Monitoring dressing activity failures through RFID and video.

BACKGROUND Monitoring and evaluation of Activities of Daily Living in general, and dressing activity in particular, is an important indicator in the evaluation of the overall cognitive state of patients. In addition, the effectiveness of therapy in patients with motor impairments caused by a stroke, for example, can be measured through long-term monitoring of dressing activity. However, automatic monitoring of dressing activity has not received significant attention in the current literature. OBJECTIVES Considering the importance of monitoring dressing activity, the main goal of this work was to investigate the possibility of recognizing dressing activities and automatically identifying common failures exhibited by patients suffering from motor or cognitive impairments. METHODS The system developed for this purpose comprised analysis of RFID (radio frequency identification) tracking and computer vision processing. Eleven test subjects, not connected to the research, were recruited and asked to perform the dressing task by choosing any combination of clothes without further assistance. Initially the test subjects performed correct dressing and then they were free to choose from a set of dressing failures identified from the current research literature. RESULTS The developed system was capable of automatically recognizing common dressing failures. In total, there were four dressing failures observed for upper garments and three failures for lower garments, in addition to recognizing successful dressing. The recognition rate for identified dressing failures was between 80% and 100%. CONCLUSIONS We developed a robust system to monitor the dressing activity. Given the importance of monitoring the dressing activity as an indicator of both cognitive and motor skills the system allows for the possibility of long term tracking and continuous evaluation of the dressing task. Long term monitoring can be used in rehabilitation and cognitive skills evaluation.