Joint Compression Research Articles

Split ways: Using GAN watermarking for digital image protection with privacy-preserving split model training

In recent years, the significant importance of digital data in the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) is receiving more and more attention, followed by more copyright violation challenges to the transmission and storage of sensitive data. To address this issue, we propose a generative adversarial network (GAN)-based image watermarking in privacy-preserving split model training. In the first stage, we trained our model in split ways without the client sharing raw data to reduce privacy leakage, if any. In the second stage, we designed a GAN-based watermarking embedder and extraction network to imperceptibly embed sensitive information while enhancing robustness. Moreover, the sensitive mark is jointly encrypted and compressed before sending it to the server, thus protecting user confidentiality while reducing the bandwidth and storage demand. We tested our proposed scheme using multiple standard datasets such as div2k, CelebA, and Flickr. The results on the div2k datasets showed that the proposed method surpassed several state-of-the-art methods, with average PSNR and NC increasing by 47.75% and 26.72% respectively. Our joint encryption and compression method also achieved superior performance compared with other methods with an average NPCR and UACI increasing by 18.25% and 16.87% respectively. To the best of our knowledge, we are the first to explore a GAN-based watermarking in split learning ways for digital images.

Anterior or Posterior Tibial Tendon Transfer to the Peroneus Tertius for Equinovarus Deformity.

Equinovarus deformity correction was performed by soft tissue release and bone deformity correction, and tendon transfer to maintain deformity correction. Because of the high complication rate of tendon fixation methods, partial or total anterior tibial tendon or posterior tibial tendon transfer to the peroneus tertius tendon was reported. The purpose of this study was (i) to review the results of this tendon transfer technique after release and correction of talipes equinovarus, and (ii) to analyze the complication of this technique. Between February 2017 and May 2022, 176 patients (210 feet) with equinus and/or varus foot and ankle deformities underwent anterior or posterior tibial tendon transfer to the peroneus tertius in our institute. Preoperative and postoperative foot and ankle range of motion (passive and active) were checked. The postoperative radiographic assessment included antero-posterior (AP), lateral, and hindfoot alignment radiographs. Preoperative and postoperative lateral tibio-talar, talo-calcaneal, talo-first metatarsal, tibial-sole angles, hindfoot alignment, and anterior subluxation of the talus were checked. The American Orthopedic Foot and Ankle Society (AOFAS) ankle-hindfoot scale, and visual analog scale (VAS) were used to assess pain. Paired Student's t-test was used to compare the clinical scores and radiographic angles before the operation and at the last follow-up. The mean age of the patients was 23.27 ± 13.44 years (range, 3-69 years). The mean follow-up time was 25.56 ± 16.37 months (range, 12-68 months). There were significant differences between the preoperative and postoperative measurements of the lateral tibio-talar angle, lateral talo-calcaneal angle, lateral talo-first metatarsal angle, lateral tibial-sole angle, and hindfoot alignment (p < 0.001). There was significant difference between the preoperative and postoperative AOFAS and VAS scores (p < 0.001). The early complications included infection in one patient, skin necrosis in two patients, and plantar numbness in three patients. The late complications included pin infection in three patients, tibio-talar joint compression in four patients, forefoot pain in two patients, toe flexion in two patients, and plantar numbness in one patient. There were three cases of complications (1.43%) related to the transferred tendons. Tibialis anterior or posterior tendon transfer to the peroneus tertius is a safe and effective method for equinovarus deformity correction. It yielded excellent outcomes that produced high patient satisfaction and few complications.

Spatio-temporal evolution law of anisotropic shear damage on rock mass joint surface affected by joint morphology

The spatial–temporal evolution law of shear damage on the joint surface is closely related to its morphological characteristics. Understanding the heterogeneous failure behavior of the joint surface is essential for revealing the controlling role of the joint morphology. The diorite from the Guanshan Tunnel is investigated through anisotropic direct shear tests in this study. Based on shear damage quantification and acoustic emission (AE) localization techniques, the heterogeneous damage evolution law of joint surfaces under different joint compression strength (JCS), normal stress (σn), and morphology parameter (M) is studied. The results indicate that the joint surface morphology, shear damage, and AE parameters exhibit similar anisotropic characteristics in different shear directions. An increase in the morphology parameter leads to an increase in shear failure, with shear fracture energy and the number of fracture events showing an increasing trend. Meanwhile, the occurrence of a large number of fracture points shifts from the pre-peak nonlinear period to the post-peak period. However, the evolution process of fracture events exhibits certain similarities, though the morphology parameters are different in two opposite shear directions. Additionally, shear damage volume and fracture energy demonstrate consistency in spatial distribution and quantitative characteristics, while the linear scale factor between cumulative shear fracture energy and damage volume decreases with increasing joint surface strength. These findings assist in a better understanding of the anti-sliding property of joint surfaces and provide crucial clues for further exploration of joint surface failure mechanisms.

Image privacy protection scheme based on high-quality reconstruction DCT compression and nonlinear dynamics

The protection of digital image privacy in Big Data environment is a hot issue of increasing concern. To address the contradiction between efficiency and security for privacy protection, this paper proposes a high-quality restored image privacy protection scheme based on Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT) frequency domain compression and nonlinear dynamics. First, the RGB space of the color image is converted to YCbCr domain with 4:2:0 sampling. Then, the image is divided into sub-blocks in the spatial domain, followed by block-wise DCT and quantization into frequency domain information. Next, both Alternating Current (AC) and Direct Current (DC) coefficients of all sub-blocks are individually extracted and subjected to compression encoding. Finally, a Rubik’s Cube permutation and filtering diffusion encryption algorithm based on a nonlinear dynamical chaotic system is designed. Moreover, a mechanism for generating dynamic chaotic sequences associated with plaintext is introduced to effectively counter cryptographic attacks. The combined approach of compression and encryption significantly reduces computational complexity while improving encryption efficiency. Through experimental simulation results, the compression encryption scheme demonstrates high compression ratios as well as excellent image recovery quality while providing enhanced security against common cryptographic attacks. The work in this paper provides a preferred joint compression and encryption technical solution for digital image privacy protection in Big Data network.

Joint Compression and Deadline Optimization for Wireless Federated Learning

Joint Compression and Deadline Optimization for Wireless Federated Learning

Investigation of Lateral and Longitudinal Deformation of Submarine Nuclear Power Plant Water-Intake Tunnel on Non-Uniform Soft Soil during Earthquake

The safety-grade water-intake immersed tunnel plays a vital role in the nuclear power cooling system, and its seismic safety is crucial. This paper employs the response displacement method and dynamic time-history analysis using the finite element software ANSYS to construct a beam–spring model and a 3D finite element model of a shield tunnel and foundation. It also develops equivalent linear dynamic constitutive and viscoelastic boundary element subprograms. This study focuses on the weak joint sections of immersed tunnels, conducting a seismic performance analysis under extreme safety earthquake conditions (SL-2). The results indicate that the joint stiffness of immersed tunnels and the increase in seismic peak values do not affect the trend of joint opening variation with longitudinal position. The change in joint opening is primarily located where the thickness of the cover layer changes abruptly or where the soil hardness is unevenly distributed. The joint opening is mainly influenced by seismic forces when considering static and dynamic superposition. When the stiffness of the joint GINA water stop exceeds a certain value, the correlation between stiffness change and joint compression–tension variation gradually weakens. This research can provide a reference for the seismic design of similar projects.

Maximum in-vivo joint contact forces double during active compared to assisted motion in the glenohumeral joint and decline long-term due to rotator cuff pathologies.

Rehabilitation programs advocate early passive and assisted motion after rotator cuff repair to induce healing und maintaining range of motion while avoiding excessive strain on the repaired tendons. In-vivo glenohumeral joint contact forces reflect the compressive forces generated by the rotator muscles. In the present study, maximum in-vivo joint contact forces (FresMax) were determined to compare active and assisted execution of a single movement and the long-term development of joint compression forces. FresMax were measured in six patients who received instrumented, telemetric modified anatomical hemi endoprostheses of the shoulder joint between 2006 and 2008. Data were gathered 23months postoperatively (2006-2010), were analysed and compared with measurements 133months postoperatively. Additional imaging was obtained as x-rays and ultrasound examination. Data analysis was conducted by synchronizing video tapes and measured force curves. New imaging showed a rupture of the M. supraspinatus and progressive joint degeneration. FresMax nearly doubled during active compared to assisted execution of each of the four chosen movements. Over the course of 133months post-surgery, the studied movements showed a decrease of active compression force, probably due to a ruptured supraspinatus, resulting in a lower active/assisted ratio. A long term follow up after eleven years, eight out of ten measured movements showed a decrease of FresMax. These results support current rehabilitation protocols recommending early passive and assisted motion to limit activation of the rotator muscles generating compressive forces. Following degeneration of the rotator cuff, active joint contact forces decrease over time.Level of evidence: III.

Minimally invasive technique for acute fixation and subtalar fusion of displaced intra-articular calcaneus fractures.

Displaced intra-articular calcaneus fractures (DIACFs) are difficult injuries to treat and are often encountered by orthopedic surgeons. For DIACFs treated nonoperatively or with open reduction internal fixation (ORIF), a common complication is painful subtalar arthritis and the need for a secondary subtalar fusion, which prolongs the overall recovery time. One treatment option to address this sequela involves ORIF with subtalar fusion as the primary treatment. We describe a reproducible, minimally invasive surgical technique for primary ORIF with subtalar fusion when the calcaneal tuberosity is amendable to cannulated screw fixation to treat these complex calcaneal fractures. Our technique offers advantages compared to other techniques in that it avoids screw traffic, allows easy bony compression of the subtalar joint, and minimizes soft tissue damage via percutaneous screw fixation. Fourteen fractured calcanei in 12 patients underwent our technique and all achieved bony union with a median time to fusion of 107.5days (range, 54-530days). Eight patients returned to work with the remaining 4 patients having an unknown work status at last follow-up, although 2 of these 4 patients resumed normal activities. Only 1 patient experienced a complication, which was an infection after achieving bony union, and was treated with successful hardware removal and our infection protocol. Overall, we conclude our surgical technique offers a successful option in the treatment of DIACFs when the calcaneal tuberosity is amendable to cannulated screw fixation.

Calculated purpose of the distance between the expansion joints of cement concrete pavements of roads

Problem. The article discusses current issues of increasing the efficiency and quality of construction of cement concrete pavements for highways. It is shown that the regulatory documents in force in Ukraine recommend reducing the distances between compression joints and expansion joints during the construction of roads made of cement concrete. However, such a reduction leads to a slowdown in the pace of road construction and a significant increase in construction costs. The increase in cost occurs due to frequent stoppages of a set of concrete-laying machines and the formation of a large amount of concrete waste. The cost of this waste can reach UAH 200 thousand per 1 kilometer of road. In addition, frequent stops of a set of machines when laying cement concrete pavements of highways slow down the time it takes to put roads into operation. Purpose of the work. The aim is to calculate the expansion of cement concrete pavement when heated under operating conditions. Methodology. The work used formulas for thermophysical calculations during thermal expansion of concrete. The paper presents the results of thermophysical calculations of the expansion of cement concrete pavements of highways during their operation at elevated temperatures. It has been shown that when there are a large number of compression joints, they can partially compensate for the space required for concrete expansion. At the same time, they can act as compression joints during low temperatures. A design of double expansion seams has been proposed, which allows increasing the distance between them. The joint work of compression and expansion seams makes it possible to increase the distance between expansion seams. Due to this, it is possible to reduce their number, while simultaneously increasing the speed of construction and maintaining the quality indicators of the coating concrete. Originality: The article presents the results of a production test of thermophysical calculations. It is shown that two experimental sections of road surfaces were built. The concept of the maximum value of thermal expansion of concrete was further developed. Practical value: On one of them, the distance between expansion joints was 101 m, and on the other – about 300 meters. In this case, the distance between the expansion joints in the double seam was 1.5 meters. These parameters were sufficient for efficient and high-quality operation of double expansion joints.

A Unified Framework for Jointly Compressing Visual and Semantic Data

The rapid advancement of multimedia and imaging technologies has resulted in increasingly diverse visual and semantic data. A large range of applications such as remote-assisted driving requires the amalgamated storage and transmission of various visual and semantic data. However, existing works suffer from the limitation of insufficiently exploiting the redundancy between different types of data. In this article, we propose a unified framework to jointly compress a diverse spectrum of visual and semantic data, including images, point clouds, segmentation maps, object attributes, and relations. We develop a unifying process that embeds the representations of these data into a joint embedding graph according to their categories, which enables flexible handling of joint compression tasks for various visual and semantic data. To fully leverage the redundancy between different data types, we further introduce an embedding-based adaptive joint encoding process and a Semantic Adaptation Module to efficiently encode diverse data based on the learned embeddings in the joint embedding graph. Experiments on the Cityscapes, MSCOCO, and KITTI datasets demonstrate the superiority of our framework, highlighting promising steps toward scalable multimedia processing.

Multimodal information bottleneck for deep reinforcement learning with multiple sensors

Reinforcement learning has achieved promising results on robotic control tasks but struggles to leverage information effectively from multiple sensory modalities that differ in many characteristics. Recent works construct auxiliary losses based on reconstruction or mutual information to extract joint representations from multiple sensory inputs to improve the sample efficiency and performance of reinforcement learning algorithms. However, the representations learned by these methods could capture information irrelevant to learning a policy and may degrade the performance. We argue that compressing information in the learned joint representations about raw multimodal observations is helpful, and propose a multimodal information bottleneck model to learn task-relevant joint representations from egocentric images and proprioception. Our model compresses and retains the predictive information in multimodal observations for learning a compressed joint representation, which fuses complementary information from visual and proprioceptive feedback and meanwhile filters out task-irrelevant information in raw multimodal observations. We propose to minimize the upper bound of our multimodal information bottleneck objective for computationally tractable optimization. Experimental evaluations on several challenging locomotion tasks with egocentric images and proprioception show that our method achieves better sample efficiency and zero-shot robustness to unseen white noise than leading baselines. We also empirically demonstrate that leveraging information from egocentric images and proprioception is more helpful for learning policies on locomotion tasks than solely using one single modality.

Impact of Obesity on Foot Kinematics: Greater Arch Compression and Metatarsophalangeal Joint Dorsiflexion despite Similar Joint Coupling Ratios

This study investigates the sagittal plane dynamics of the foot, particularly the metatarsophalangeal (MTP) joint and medial longitudinal arch (MLA) movements, in relation to obesity and foot health. The kinematics of the MTP and arch joints were measured in 17 individuals with class 2–3 obesity (BMI &gt; 35 kg/m²) and 10 normal-weight individuals (BMI ≤ 24.9 kg/m²) using marker-based tracking. Analysis was conducted during heel lifting while seated and during walking at self-selected speeds. The results indicated that obese participants exhibited 20.92% greater MTP joint dorsiflexion at the end of the push-off phase and 19.84% greater MLA compression during the stance phase compared to normal-weight controls. However, no significant differences were found in the kinematic joint coupling ratio. While these findings reveal the different biomechanical behaviors of the MTP joint and MLA in obese compared to normal-weight individuals, it is important to interpret the implications of these differences with caution. This study identifies specific biomechanical variations that could be further explored to understand their potential impact on foot health in obese populations.

Exploiting high-quality reconstruction image encryption strategy by optimized orthogonal compressive sensing

Compressive sensing is favored because it breaks through the constraints of Nyquist sampling law in signal reconstruction. However, the security defects of joint compression encryption and the problem of low quality of reconstructed image restoration need to be solved urgently. In view of this, this paper proposes a compressive sensing image encryption scheme based on optimized orthogonal measurement matrix. Utilizing a combination of DWT and OMP, along with chaos, the proposed scheme achieves high-security image encryption and superior quality in decryption reconstruction. Firstly, the orthogonal optimization method is used to improve the chaotic measurement matrix. Combined with Part Hadamard matrix, the measurement matrix with strong orthogonal characteristics is constructed by Kronecker product. Secondly, the original image is sparsely represented by DWT. Meanwhile, Arnold scrambling is used to disturb the correlation between its adjacent pixels. Following this, the image is compressed and measured in accordance with the principles of compressive sensing and obtain the intermediate image to be encrypted. Finally, the chaotic sequence generated based on 2D-LSCM is used to perform on odd-even interleaved diffusion and row-column permutation at bit-level to obtain the final ciphertext. The experimental results show that this scheme meets the cryptographic requirements of obfuscation, diffusion and avalanche effects, and also has a large key space, which is sufficient to resist brute-force cracking attacks. Based on the sparse and reconstruction algorithm of compressive sensing proposed in this paper, it has better image restoration quality than similar algorithms. Consequently, the compressive sensing image encryption scheme enhances both security and reconstruction quality, presenting promising applications in the evolving landscape of privacy protection for network big data.

Hide Digital Images in Encrypted Image Files After Two Stages

This paper introduces a novel encryption technique for concealing digital images within encrypted files through a two-stage process. The methodology incorporates sparse coding and compressive sensing, leveraging a learned dictionary to recover the sparse coding of plain images. Comprising compressive sampling and random projection with a Gaussian measurement matrix, the approach achieves joint compression and encryption. Pseudorandom encryption and chaos-based block scrambling are subsequently applied to produce the final encrypted image. Experimental results using 256 × 256 test photographs from the USC-SIPI dataset demonstrate the superiority of the proposed method in terms of both Peak Signal-to-Noise Ratio (PSNR) and Structural Similarity Index (SSIM). The study also conducts key sensitivity analysis, revealing the method's susceptibility to changes in the secret key, and statistical attack analysis, demonstrating its robustness against attacks exploiting statistical information. In conclusion, the proposed encryption technique not only ensures cryptographic strength but also excels in image reconstruction quality, making it a promising solution for secure image transmission and storage

Estimation of the forces exerted on the limb long bones of a white rhinoceros (Ceratotherium simum) using musculoskeletal modelling and simulation.

Heavy animals incur large forces on their limb bones, due to the transmission of body weight and ground reaction forces, and the contractions of the various muscles of the limbs. This is particularly true for rhinoceroses, the heaviest extant animals capable of galloping. Several studies have examined their musculoskeletal system and the forces their bones incur, but no detailed quantification has ever been attempted. Such quantification could help understand better the link between form and function in giant land animals. Here we constructed three-dimensional musculoskeletal models of the forelimb and hindlimb of Ceratotherium simum, the heaviest extant rhino species, and used static optimisation (inverse) simulations to estimate the forces applied on the bones when standing at rest, including magnitudes and directions. Overall, unsurprisingly, the most active muscles were antigravity muscles, which generate moments opposing body weight (thereby incurring the ground reaction force), and thus keep the joints extended, avoiding joint collapse via flexion. Some muscles have an antigravity action around several joints, and thus were found to be highly active, likely specialised in body weight support (ulnaris lateralis; digital flexors). The humerus was subjected to the greatest amount of forces in terms of total magnitude; forces on the humerus furthermore came from a great variety of directions. The radius was mainly subject to high-magnitude compressive joint reaction forces, but to little muscular tension, whereas the opposite pattern was observed for the ulna. The femur had a pattern similar to that of the humerus, and the tibia's pattern was intermediate, being subject to great compression in its caudal side but to great tension in its cranial side (i.e. bending). The fibula was subject to by far the lowest force magnitude. Overall, the forces estimated were consistent with the documented morphofunctional adaptations of C. simum's long bones, which have larger insertion areas for several muscles and a greater robusticity overall than those of lighter rhinos, likely reflecting the intense forces we estimated here. Our estimates of muscle and bone (joint) loading regimes for this giant tetrapod improve the understanding of the links between form and function in supportive tissues and could be extended to other aspects of bone morphology, such as microanatomy.

Long-Term Treatment Outcome of a Patient with Extensive Circular Soft Tissue Defect of the Distal Third of the Lower Extremity: A Case Report

Background. Open fractures of the lower leg bones associated with extensive soft tissue defects are among the most challenging in trauma surgery.&#x0D; Aim of the study is to demonstrate the possibilities of modern reconstructive surgery in the treatment of severe polystructural trauma of the lower limb using a unique clinical example.&#x0D; Case description. An 18-year-old patient sustained a polytrauma which included head and extremities injuries as a result of a fall under a moving train. Due to the signs of uncompensated ischemia of the left lower limb at the first stage of treatment the patient underwent emergency left tibial artery thrombectomy, repeated debridement of the left lower leg wound, remounting of the external fixator, and lumbar sympathectomy. The second stage of surgical treatment included free transplantation of a vascularized anterolateral flap of the right thigh. The third stage included staged necrectomies; replacement of the soft tissue defect of the posteromedial surface of the distal lower leg with a sural fasciocutaneous vascularized flap on the distal vascular pedicle from the contralateral tibia; the fourth stage included cutting off the fasciocutaneous cross flap. At the follow-up, 2 years after the end of the treatment the patient complained of persisting swelling of the foot, which occurred during prolonged standing in the upright position and required elastic compression of the ankle joint. The cause of the swelling was impaired lymphatic outflow due to the damage to all venous collaterals in the injury area. She walks with full load on the injured limb without additional support. There is no pain syndrome, foot sensitivity is fully preserved.&#x0D; Conclusion. Presented clinical case demonstrates the possibility of successful replacement of an extensive circular defect of the distal lower leg using sequentially free and non-free vascularized tissue complexes.

Scene Graph Lossless Compression with Adaptive Prediction for Objects and Relations

The scene graph is a novel data structure describing objects and their pairwise relationship within image scenes. As the size of scene graphs in vision and multimedia applications increases, the need for lossless storage and transmission of such data becomes more critical. However, the compression of scene graphs is less studied because of the complicated data structures involved and complex distributions. Existing solutions usually involve general-purpose compressors or graph structure compression methods, which are weak at reducing the redundancy in scene graph data. This article introduces a novel lossless compression framework with adaptive predictors for the joint compression of objects and relations in scene graph data. The proposed framework comprises a unified prior extractor and specialized element predictors to adapt to different data elements. Furthermore, to exploit the context information within and between graph elements, Graph Context Convolution is proposed to support different graph context modeling schemes for different graph elements. Finally, an overarching framework incorporates the learned distribution model to predict numerical data under complicated conditional constraints. Experiments conducted on labeled or generated scene graphs demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed framework for scene graph lossless compression.

Grouped machine learning methods for predicting rock mass parameters in a tunnel boring machine‐driven tunnel based on fuzzy C‐means clustering

AbstractTo guarantee safe and efficient tunneling of a tunnel boring machine (TBM), rapid and accurate judgment of the rock mass condition is essential. Based on fuzzy C‐means clustering, this paper proposes a grouped machine learning method for predicting rock mass parameters. An elaborate data set on field rock mass is collected, which also matches field TBM tunneling. Meanwhile, target stratum samples are divided into several clusters by fuzzy C‐means clustering, and multiple submodels are trained by samples in different clusters with the input of pretreated TBM tunneling data and the output of rock mass parameter data. Each testing sample or newly encountered tunneling condition can be predicted by multiple submodels with the weight of the membership degree of the sample to each cluster. The proposed method has been realized by 100 training samples and verified by 30 testing samples collected from the C1 part of the Pearl Delta water resources allocation project. The average percentage error of uniaxial compressive strength and joint frequency (Jf) of the 30 testing samples predicted by the pure back propagation (BP) neural network is 13.62% and 12.38%, while that predicted by the BP neural network combined with fuzzy C‐means is 7.66% and 6.40%, respectively. In addition, by combining fuzzy C‐means clustering, the prediction accuracies of support vector regression and random forest are also improved to different degrees, which demonstrates that fuzzy C‐means clustering is helpful for improving the prediction accuracy of machine learning and thus has good applicability. Accordingly, the proposed method is valuable for predicting rock mass parameters during TBM tunneling.

Efficacy of Isometric Exercises and Somatosensory Training for Pain, Proprioception, and Balance in Runners with Patellofemoral Pain Syndrome.

Background A significant cause of knee pain is patellofemoral pain syndrome (PFPS). Young adults are the most common population to be impacted, and this condition appears to affect both sexes. Patellofemoral joint (PFJ) compression, which is felt around the patella during any physical or athletic activity, usually causes patients to experience pain in the anterior part of the knee. Physiotherapy is essential for patients suffering from this illness, as it can improve their everyday activities and ability to return to their sport. Methodology The study's main goal was to evaluate the effectiveness of somatosensory training and isometric exercises for pain, proprioception, and balance in runners with PFPS. Before- and after-test approaches were used in the investigation. Eighty-five people made up the study, with the inclusion and exclusion criteria used to determine eligibility. Isometric exercises and somatosensory training were given to every individual; the group was not randomly assigned. The patient's diagnosis was made using the patellar grind test. Participants received 30-45 minutes of isometric exercises and 15 minutes of somatosensory training every four days. The visual analog scale, joint position sense test, and Y-balance test were taken as outcome measures to measure PFPS before and after the intervention. Results The result revealed significant (p=0.0001) improvement in PFPS following the intervention. Both the isometric exercises and somatosensory training were found to be significant in reducing the intensity of the pain and improving the proprioception and balance of the individuals. Conclusion Both treatment approaches were beneficial in lowering pain in the joints, developing balance, and helping the patient perceive the position of the joint. Individuals can use both therapy methods to improve their running abilities, and they should become ingrained in daily practice.

Implementing an accelerometer-based pelvis segment for low back kinetic analyses during dynamic movement tasks

An accelerometer-based pelvis has been employed to study segment and joint kinematics during scenarios involving close human-object interface and/or line-of-sight obstructions. However, its accuracy for examining low back kinetic outcomes is unknown. This study compared reaction moments and contact forces of the L5S1 joint calculated with an accelerometer-based and optically tracked pelvis segment. An approach to correct the global pelvis position as a function of thigh angle was developed. One participant performed four dynamic tasks: forward bend, squat, sit-to-stand-to-sit, and forward lunge. A standard bottom-up inverse dynamics approach was used and the root mean square error (RMSE) and coefficient of determination (R2) were calculated to examine kinetic differences between the optical and accelerometer approaches. The RMSE observed for L5S1 reaction flexion-extension moments ranged from 1.32 Nm to 2.20 Nm (R2 ≥ 0.98). The RMSE for net shear and compression reaction forces ranged from 2.13 to 10.45 N and 0.63 – 4.96 N, respectively. Similarly, the RMSE for L5S1 joint contact shear and compression ranged from 13.45 N to 19.51 N (R2 ≥ 0.85) and 31.18 N – 55.97 N (R2 ≥ 0.97), respectively. In conclusion, the accelerometer-based pelvis together with the approach to correct the global pelvis position is a feasible approach for computing low back kinetics with a single equivalent muscle model. The observed error in joint contact forces represents less than 5 % of the NIOSH recommended action limits and is unlikely to alter the interpretation of low back injury risk.