Pen Pressure Research Articles

Significant role of pen pressure in differentiating between genuine and forged handwritings & signatures

Significant role of pen pressure in differentiating between genuine and forged handwritings & signatures

Rhythmic training, literacy, and graphomotor skills in kindergarteners.

The aim of this manuscript is twofold: first, to investigate the relationship between rhythmic, phonological and graphomotor skills in kindergarten children; and second, to evaluate the possible impact of rhythmic training on the two other skills. To that end, we selected a sample of 78 children in Québec. Forty-two children received rhythmic training (experimental group) and 34 arts training (active control group) during the same period (10 weeks). Before and after training, children in both groups were assessed for general skills (forward and backward memory span, vocabulary, non-verbal ability), rhythmic skills (synchronization and discrimination tasks), literacy skills (phonological skills - syllable counting, syllable deletion, rhyme discrimination - and invented spelling skills) and graphomotor skills (legibility of letter writing, quality of copying of geometric shapes). Results showed correlations between the child's rhythmic and literacy skills, as well as between rhythm synchronization and pen pressure. In addition, rhythmic training showed improvement in rhythmic abilities, but this did not transfer to literacy or graphomotor development (apart from a significant increase in the duration of pauses in both groups at post-test, with a larger improvement for the rhythm group). These results are discussed in terms of duration and intensity of learning, and they highlight the possible benefits of informal rhythm practices in the classroom.

Changes in Pen Pressure, Letter Size, and Writing Speed According to Visual Cues in Patients with Parkinson’s Disease

Purpose: Writing performance can be improved in patients with Parkinson’s disease (PD) by providing the visual cues. This study aimed to investigate the changes in pen pressure, letter size, and writing speed as per levels of visual cues.Methods: Sixty-three participants (38 PD patients and 25 normal adults) performed tasks, including sentence writing along visual cue levels using a tablet personal computer, digital pen, and software that could measure the pen pressure, stroke length, and duration.Results: First, the PD group’s pen pressure and letter size were improved when the visual cue was provided. Second, the effect of visual cues was shown more in the performance of ‘writing within square blanks’ than in the performance of ‘copying’ and ‘writing between parallel lines’. Especially, there were no significant differences between the groups in terms of the letter size in ‘writing within square blanks’.Conclusion: Despite movement disorders in PD patients, our findings suggest that pen pressure and letter size can be improved when the patients are provided visual cues. Our results indicate that providing visual cues hierarchically and objectively confirms changes in writing performance.

Testing of Motor Coordination in Degenerative Neurological Diseases.

Parkinson’s disease (PD) is a progressive movement disorder caused by the death of dopamine-producing cells in the midbrain. PD is the most prevalent movement disorder of the central nervous system and affects more than 6.3 million people in the world. The changes in the motor functions of patients are not easy to be clearly and on-time observed by the clinicians and to make the most well-informed decisions for the treatment. The aim of this paper is the monitoring PD by designing, developing, and evaluating a prototype mobile App using a pressure pen, which collects quantitative and objective information about PD patients, thus allowing clinicians to understand better and make assumptions about the severity and the stage of Parkinson’s disease. This study presents a dynamic spiral test that can only be performed with tablet and pen pressure. Furthermore, the handwriting samples by PD patients and healthy controls individuals are collected by a computerized system, and the measurements of Spiral Deviation, Total Time, and Pen Pressure are processed. The results showed an accurate evaluation of the stage of Parkinson’s disease. Thus, the clinician may use the proposed PD telemonitoring system as a screening test, storing the history of all the patient’s measurements.

Mode Switching in Multi-Modality Pen Interface

Aiming at the low efficiency of mode switching in pen user interface, mode switching techniques are designed and evaluated. First, 6 mode switching techniques which are pen-pressure-trajectory, pen-tilt-trajectory, pen-azimuth-trajectory, pen-pressure-discretization, pen-tilt-discretization and pen-azimuth-discretization are designed according to pen-modality-trajectory and pen-modality-discretization by using pen pressure, pen tilt and pen azimuth modalities. Second, the comparative experiment of color and thickness adjustment in the process of painting is designed and carried out on the Wacom Intuos 3 to evaluate the performance of the mode switching techniques and the referencing technique. The experimental results showed that the pen-pressure-trajectory technique has the best comprehensive performance. Its time consumption is reduced by 20.13% and its comprehensive performance is improved by 37.68% compared to the referencing technique. The time consumption of pen-tilt-trajectory technique, pen-azimuth-trajectory technique and pen-azimuth-discretization technique are reduced by 11.12%, 2.65% and 10.70% respectively compared to the referencing technique. The error rates of pen-tilt-discretization technique and pen-azimuth-discretization technique are reduced by 62.82% and 32.38% respectively compared to the referencing technique. Last, the performance of mode switching techniques are analyzed, and the improvement measures of mode switching technique such as setting reasonable threshold, analyzing context environment and selecting appropriate switching level are given.

Evaluating the Grip Strength and Pen Pressure in Handwriting Performance among Children with Developmental Coordination Disorder in India

Handwriting difficulties were predominant among children with developmental coordination disorder. Poor muscle strength and pressure exerted by pen were factors assessed by the clinicians and they play a role in determining the handwriting efficiency. There is no empirical evidence on the handwriting efficiency and the factors associated with it for Indian children with developmental coordination disorder. The study aims in evaluating the grip strength and pen pressure in handwriting performance among children with developmental coordination disorder. Ten children of age group 5-10 years with developmental coordination disorder were compared with typically developing children. Hand dynamometers were used in evaluating the palmar and tripod grip strength. Handwriting task was compared between the typically developing children and Developmental coordination disorder children and the results of the study assured that there was no significant difference documented in the hand dynamometer measures of grip strength. DCD children exhibit less pressure on writing surface as compared to typically developing peer group children. There was no correlation between grip strength and pen pressure over handwriting efficiency in children with developmental coordination disorder. Clinicians should create awareness on the importance of enhancing handwriting skill among children with developmental coordination disorder.

Technical note: A novel 3D scan-based optical method for analyzing lines drawn at different pen pressure

Pen pressure is one of the important elements of handwriting and questioned document analysis which is also crucial to recognize forgery. In this paper, we present a new, non-contact, non-destructive, and relatively inexpensive technique to measure the width of the grooves made by the writing. Results demonstrate a clear difference in measured groove widths for varying pen pressure. The effect of passing a written or signed paper in different types of printers has also been studied. A clear decrease of the groove depth was noted when passing the document through a laser printer. An ink jet printer only resulted in a small decrease of the groove depth, while no effect could be detected from a dot matrix printer.

Automated Analysis of Drawing Process to Estimate Global Cognition in Older Adults: Preliminary International Validation on the US and Japan Data Sets.

BackgroundWith the aging of populations worldwide, early detection of cognitive impairments has become a research and clinical priority, particularly to enable preventive intervention for dementia. Automated analysis of the drawing process has been studied as a promising means for lightweight, self-administered cognitive assessment. However, this approach has not been sufficiently tested for its applicability across populations.ObjectiveThe aim of this study was to evaluate the applicability of automated analysis of the drawing process for estimating global cognition in community-dwelling older adults across populations in different nations.MethodsWe collected drawing data with a digital tablet, along with Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA) scores for assessment of global cognition, from 92 community-dwelling older adults in the United States and Japan. We automatically extracted 6 drawing features that characterize the drawing process in terms of the drawing speed, pauses between drawings, pen pressure, and pen inclinations. We then investigated the association between the drawing features and MoCA scores through correlation and machine learning–based regression analyses.ResultsWe found that, with low MoCA scores, there tended to be higher variability in the drawing speed, a higher pause:drawing duration ratio, and lower variability in the pen’s horizontal inclination in both the US and Japan data sets. A machine learning model that used drawing features to estimate MoCA scores demonstrated its capability to generalize from the US dataset to the Japan dataset (R2=0.35; permutation test, P<.001).ConclusionsThis study presents initial empirical evidence of the capability of automated analysis of the drawing process as an estimator of global cognition that is applicable across populations. Our results suggest that such automated analysis may enable the development of a practical tool for international use in self-administered, automated cognitive assessment.

Quantification of hand functional recovery in spinal cord injury patients

Study design A prospective cohort study. Objectives To examine the use of a circle-tracing task in quantifying hand functional recovery in cervical spinal cord injury patients. Methods Ten cervical spinal cord injury (SCI) patients and 10 healthy age-matched controls performed a circle-tracing task, using a computerized tablet at the beginning of the study and after 4 weeks. Data relative to performance accuracy as well as pen pressure throughout the performances were collected, and clinical assessment for all patients was performed at the beginning and at the end of the study. Results Significant differences were found in pen pressure profiles in the SCI patients between the initial assessment and after 4 weeks of assessment. SCI patients, when compared with controls, apply less pressure during the execution, though no significant differences were found for the other parameters. Examination of pen pressure profiles of both controls and SCI patients reveals that, in addition to the lower pressure registered, SCI patients present a more oscillating pressure profile which is direction-dependent. No significant correlations were found between clinical assessments and pen pressure, both within the initial assessment as well as after 4 weeks. Conclusions This study emphasizes the potential of simple computerized means for quantifying upper limb functions in SCI patients. These results of this study could be helpful for both highlighting specific functional deficits in patients as well tailoring specific interventions.

A feature fusion sequence learning approach for quantitative analysis of tremor symptoms based on digital handwriting

Essential tremor and Parkinson's disease are common movement disorders, and early diagnosis and evaluation are critical to managing these diseases. Currently, laboratory tests are the only way to diagnose and assess tremor symptoms. Analysis of a patient's fine motor control, especially handwriting, is a powerful tool for disease assessment. However, traditional visual assessment methods by neurologists typically lead to biased diagnostic results due to some subjective factors. Therefore, it is necessary to automatically identify and quantify the captured motion events with the help of artificial intelligence in combination with the various dynamic attributes encapsulated in the digital ink features, such as pen pressure, stroke speed, handwriting variability, etc. In this paper, a novel Transformer deep-learning model is developed for sequence learning of electronic handwriting to effectively evaluate its potential in aiding the diagnosis of tremor symptoms. The one-dimensional convolution with an ingenious fusion attention mechanism is applied to the original pen sensor signal sequences and derived features are used as the embedding layer of the Transformer encoder part, and the global dynamic features are fused before the decision layer. Our proposed system performs excellent on private datasets and outperforms state-of-the-art methods on the PaHaW dataset.

A systematic review of methodologies used in calculation of pen pressure in FDE

Pen pressure is an important individual characteristic of the handwriting examination whose potential has not been fully utilized. Most of the times it is overlooked by experts because they do not think it has substantial value to be of forensic significance. Generally, it is thought to be of relevance in cases involving simple and traced forgery. One of the reasons behind pen pressure being ignored by the document examiners may be a lack of technique to calculate the absolute value of pen pressure. The existing methods require specialized setup, training, and are expensive in nature and can only be used to measure relative value of pen pressure. The aim of this paper is to discuss various methodologies used by document experts and researchers in past with an attempt to quantify pen pressure and critically analyze them to bring the reader’s and researcher’s focus on their advantages and disadvantages. The paper also discusses prospects of future works which may include techniques that can be used more routinely in handwriting examination and can also give an absolute measure of pen pressure. In this aspect, mathematical approaches can be further explored.

Predictive Indicators of Kinematic Writing Ability in Patients with Parkinson’s Disease: Focusing on Cognition, Depression, and Motor Abilities

Objectives: Parkinson’s disease (PD) can affect not only motor abilities but also cognition and depression. The purpose of this study was to investigate the predictive indicators of kinematic writing ability in patients with Parkinson’s disease.Methods: Seventy-two subjects (47 patients with PD, 25 normal adults [NA]) performed tasks; including sentence writing along visual cues using software that could measure pen pressure, letter size, and writing speed.Results: Firstly, discriminant analysis showed that the writing speeds were good discriminators for the PD group. Secondly, the PD group showed positive correlation between the Korean version of the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA-K) score and pen pressure in the ‘writing within square blanks task’. They also showed a positive correlation between the Unified Parkinson’s Disease Rating Scale (UPDRS) score and letter size in the ‘free writing task’. The PD group showed a negative correlation between UPDRS score and writing speed in the ‘writing within square blank task’. Thirdly, the MoCA-K score showed significant explanatory power for pen pressure, and the UPDRS score showed significant explanatory power for the writing speed in the PD group.Conclusion: This study is significant in that it confirms the importance of considering various factors such as cognitive ability when examining the writing characteristics of patients with PD, which have been focused only on motor skills so far.

Neural Correlates of Executed Compared to Imagined Writing and Drawing Movements: A Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging Study.

ObjectiveIn this study we used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to investigate whether motor imagery (MI) of handwriting and circle drawing activates a similar handwriting network as writing and drawing itself.MethodsEighteen healthy right-handed participants wrote the German word “Wellen” and drew continuously circles in a sitting (vertical position) and lying position (horizontal position) to capture kinematic handwriting parameters such as velocity, pressure and regularity of hand movements. Afterward, they performed the same tasks during fMRI in a MI and an executed condition.ResultsThe kinematic analysis revealed a general correlation of handwriting parameters during sitting and lying except of pen pressure during drawing. Writing compared to imagined writing was accompanied by an increased activity of the ipsilateral cerebellum and the contralateral sensorimotor cortex. Executed compared to imagined drawing revealed elevated activity of a fronto–parieto-temporal network. By contrasting writing and drawing directly, executed writing induced an enhanced activation of the left somatosensory and premotor area. The comparison of the MI of these tasks revealed a higher involvement of occipital activation during imagined writing.ConclusionThe kinematic results pointed to a high comparability of writing in a vertical and horizontal position. Overall, we observed highly overlapping cortical activity except of a higher involvement of motor control areas during motor execution. The sparse difference between writing and drawing can be explained by highly automatized writing in healthy individuals.

Kinematic analysis of handwriting movements and pencil grip patterns in children with low vision

Handwriting skills are important for the academic life of children and the lack of visual-motor performance leads to writing problems in children with low vision. This study aims to reveal handwriting kinematics and pencil grip features in children with low vision by means of a novel method. 18 children with low vision (mean age: 9.83±1.54years) and 18 children with typical development (mean age: 9.83±1.62years) were included in the study. Children performed a sentence writing task on a digitizer tablet. During the task, the writing hand of children was photographed to analyze pencil grip patterns. Children with low vision performed greater stroke size except for the vertical size, slower writing speed, more dysfluent movements, and less pen pressure than children with typical development. However, participants preferred mature pencil grip patterns and had high grip scores independent from the diagnosis. The findings indicate that children with low vision have difficulties in handwriting in terms of spatial and temporal features. These results would be important for interventions to develop specific programs on writing skills to support their educational life.

A Study on Hwabyung and ‘Favorite Kind of Weather (FKW)’ Drawings of Alcohol Use Disorder Patients

본 연구는 알코올 사용장애 환자의 화병과 FKW의 반응특성을 통하여 알코올 사용장애 환자의 화병 정도를 파악할 수 있는 검사도구 FKW의 활용 가능성을 알아보고자 하였다. 이를 위하여 알코올 치료전문병원에 입원 중인162명의 알코올 사용장애 환자를 대상으로 FKW, 화병척도를 사용하였고, 자료분석은 교차분석을 하였다. 연구결과는 첫째, 알코올 사용장애 환자의 성별에 따른 화병의 차이는 화병성격과 화병증상 모두 여성이 높은 것으로 나타났다. 둘째, 화병 정도에 따른 FKW 그림 반응특성 차이는 형식요인에서는 공간 사용과 필압에서 유의미한 차이를 보였고, 날씨요인에서는 해, 비, 번개, 날씨 움직임에서, 색상요인에서는 회색, 검정에서 유의미한 차이를 나타냈다. 셋째, 화병 정도에 따른 FKW의 PDI 반응특성 차이는 그림 제목, 그림 속 날씨, 이후 날씨, 그림의 느낌에서 유의미한 차이를 나타냈다. 이러한 연구결과를 통하여 FKW가 알코올 사용장애 환자의 화병을 파악하는 검사도구로 활용 가능하다는것을 확인할 수 있었다.The purpose of this study is to investigate the possibility of using the FKW, a test tool that can determine the degree of the vase of alcohol use disorder patients through the reaction characteristics of the vase and FKW. For this purpose, FKW and Hwabyung scale were used for 162 alcohol use disorder patients admitted to an alcohol treatment hospital, and data analysis was cross-analyzed. The results of the study were first, that the difference in Hwabyeong according to the gender of patients with alcohol use disorder was found to be higher in women in both the personality and symptoms of Hwabyeong. Second, the difference in FKW drawings response characteristics according to the degree of vase showed a significant difference in space use and pen pressure in the formal factor, the sun, rain, lightning, and weather movement in the weather factor, and gray and black in the color factor. Third, the difference in the PDI response characteristics of FKW according to the degree of vase showed significant differences in the title of the drawings, the weather in the drawings, the weather after that, and the overall feeling. Through these research results, it was confirmed that FKW can be used as a test tool to identify the vases of alcohol use disorder patients.

A Novel 3D Scan-Based Optical Method for Analyzing Lines Drawn at Different Pen Pressure

A Novel 3D Scan-Based Optical Method for Analyzing Lines Drawn at Different Pen Pressure

Transfer Learning to Detect Age From Handwriting

Handwriting analysis is the science of determining an individual’s personality from his or her handwriting by assessing features such as slant, pen pressure, word spacing, and other factors. Handwriting analysis has a wide range of uses and applications, including dating and socialising, roommates and landlords, business and professional, employee hiring, and human resources. This study used the ResNet and GoogleNet CNN architectures as fixed feature extractors from handwriting samples. SVM was used to classify the writer’s gender and age based on the extracted features. We built an Arabic dataset named FSHS to analyse and test the proposed system. In the gender detection system, applying the automatic feature extraction method to the FSHS dataset produced accuracy rates of 84.9% and 82.2% using ResNet and GoogleNet, respectively. While the age detection system using the automatic feature extraction method achieved accuracy rates of 69.7% and 61.1% using ResNet and GoogleNet, respectively

An Experimental Study on the Effects of Digital Signature Writing Speed and Writing Posture on Pen Pressure Based on Statistics and Neural Network

An Experimental Study on the Effects of Digital Signature Writing Speed and Writing Posture on Pen Pressure Based on Statistics and Neural Network

Computerised analysis of writing and drawing by essential tremor phenotype

We investigated whether computerised analysis of writing and drawing could discriminate essential tremor (ET) phenotypes according to the 2018 Consensus Statement on the Classification of Tremors. The Consensus scheme emphasises...

Elucidating the relationships between two automated handwriting feature quantification systems for multiple pairwise comparisons.

Recent advances in complex automated handwriting identification systems have led to a lack of understandability of these systems' computational processes and features by the forensic handwriting examiners that they are designed to support. To mitigate this issue, this research studied the relationship between two systems: FLASH ID® , an automated handwriting/black box system that uses measurements extracted from a static image of handwriting, and MovAlyzeR® , a system that captures kinematic features from pen strokes. For this study, 33 writers each wrote 60 phrases from the London Letter using cursive writing and handprinting, which led to thousands of sample pairs for analysis. The dissimilarities between pairs of samples were calculated using two score functions (one for each system). The observed results indicate that dissimilarity scores based on kinematic spatial-geometric pen stroke features (e.g., amplitude and slant) have a statistically significant relationship with dissimilarity scores obtained using static, graph-based features used by the FLASH ID® system. Similar relationships were observed for temporal features (e.g., duration and velocity) but not pen pressure, and for both handprinting and cursive samples. These results strongly imply that both the current implementation of FLASH ID® and MovAlyzeR® rely on similar features sets when measuring differences in pairs of handwritten samples. These results suggest that studies of biometric discrimination using MovAlyzeR® , specifically those based on the spatial-geometric feature set, support the validity of biometric matching algorithms based on FLASH ID® output.