B Soran, L Lowes, KM Steele (2016) “Evaluation of infants with spinal muscular atrophy using convolutional neural networks.” European Conference on Computer Vision

B Soran, L Lowes, KM Steele (2016) “Evaluation of infants with spinal muscular atrophy using convolutional neural networks.” European Conference on Computer Vision

Peer-reviewed paper at European Conference on Computer Vision:

30-second videos from a depth camera can be used in the evaluation of infants with spinal muscular atrophy.

Experimental set-up with infant positioned below Kinect depth camera.Abstract: Spinal Muscular Atrophy is the most common genetic cause of infant death. Due to its severity, there is a need for methods for automated estimation of disease progression. In this paper we propose a Convolutional-Neural-Network (CNN) model to estimate disease progression during infants’ natural behavior. With the proposed methodology, we were able to predict each child’s score on current behavior-based clinical exams with an average per-subject error of 6.96 out of 72 points (<10 % difference), using 30-second videos in leave-one-subject-out-cross-validation setting. When simple statistics were used over 30-second video-segments to estimate a score for longer videos, we obtained an average error of 5.95 (8 % error rate). By showing promising results on a small dataset (N = 70, 2-minute samples, which were handled as 1487, 30-second video segments), our methodology demonstrates that it is possible to benefit from CNNs on small datasets by proper design and data handling choices.

Jessica Zistatsis awarded Mechanical Engineering Fellowship

jessicazCongratulations to Jessica for being acknowledged by the Department of Mechanical Engineering for her academic achievements and potential for success within her masters studies.

Jessica is dedicated to creating a pediatric exoskeleton which promotes improved walking patterns during daily life, outside of therapy sessions. This fellowship will allow Jessica to devote more time towards her research and studies. Congrats!

 

“Can thoughts be harnessed to move robotic limbs?” – Lab featured in Seattle Times NW

jaynaThis past Friday, the University unleashed its most ambitious philanthropic campaign, UW Together. The Ability & Innovation Lab was honored to have a team of undergraduate’s work featured, an elbow-driven orthosis for Jayna.

This story is now featured in the Seattle Times NW Showcase section, and Kat, our Director, is featured in an ad to the right of the story. To read and watch the video, CLICK HERE. We are proud to partner with the Center for Sensorimotor Neural Engineering (CSNE) here in the College of Engineering. Innovation occurs at the intersection of multiple disciplines, and Together we can change the world.

Go Dawgs and Go Biomechanics!

 

UW Together – Featured Project

Here at the Ability & Innovation Lab we are fortunate to partner with amazing families and people who are our user experts for feedback and ideas when creating new devices and designs. Jayna and her family are fantastic partners in the design project for Jayna, alongside our undergraduate students. The second prototype is now underway to improve the comfort, donning and doffing, and applicability of Jayna’s elbow-driven device to enable the use of her left arm during two handed tasks.

UW Together presents Jayna’s story HERE.

Jayna and Bradley work on bi-manual tasks (two-handed) during Jayna's visit to the Ability and Innovation Lab