Monitoring changes in physical activity data during strength training of people with myotonic dystrophy type 1

Abstract

Myotonic dytrophy type 1 (DM1) is an incurable neuromuscular disease and muscle weakness is a prominent symptom. Research has shown that strength training can be an interesting solution to help with this symptom. Therefore an assistive technology aiming at supervising strength training at home for people with DM1 has been developed and tested in the home of 10 patients for 10 weeks. As many change point detection (CPD) techniques have been used for monitoring change in activity data in the past, no one applied these techniques to physical activities of people with DM1 disease. Hence, physical activity data have been collected during the 10-week experiment and state-of-the-art CPD algorithm has been used to analyze changes in physical activity during the strength training program at home. The results prove that many challenges need to be addressed in this context and could act as a guideline for future works.