Effect of registration on cyclical kinematic data

Abstract

Given growing interest in functional data analysis (FDA) as a useful method for analyzing human movement data, it is critical to understand the effects of standard FDA procedures, including registration, on biomechanical analyses. Registration is used to reduce phase variability between curves while preserving the individual curve's shape and amplitude. The application of three methods available to assess registration could benefit those in the biomechanics community using FDA techniques: comparison of mean curves, comparison of average RMS values, and assessment of time-warping functions. Therefore, the present study has two purposes. First, the necessity of registration applied to cyclical data after time normalization is assessed. Second, we illustrate the three methods for evaluating registration effects. Masticatory jaw movements of 22 healthy adults (2 males, 21 females) were tracked while subjects chewed a gum-based pellet for 20s. Motion data were captured at 60Hz with two gen-locked video cameras. Individual chewing cycles were time normalized and then transformed into functional observations. Registration did not affect mean curves and warping functions were linear. Although registration decreased the RMS, indicating a decrease in inter-subject variability, the difference was not statistically significant. Together these results indicate that registration may not always be necessary for cyclical chewing data. An important contribution of this paper is the illustration of three methods for evaluating registration that are easy to apply and useful for judging whether the extra data manipulation is necessary.