Evidence map›Paper›PMID 42560896›Full record

ArticlePLOS digital health2026

Deep learning-based physical exercise assessment of older adults using single-camera videos.

Vayalet Stefanova, Evelien Maeyens, Jeroen Brughmans, Dimitri Vargemidis, Julien Lebleu, Leen Stulens, Sanne Broeder, Karen Gilis, Mieke Deschodt, Benedicte Vanwanseele and 4 more

Abstract read
In one paragraph

Article in PLOS digital health, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
0citing papers in PubMed
–field-weighted citation impact
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

0 citing papers in PubMed.

No citing paper in PubMed yet.

4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

14 authors.

Vayalet StefanovaDepartment of Electrical Engineering (ESAT), KU Leuven, Leuven, Belgium.ORCID https://orcid.org/0009-0006-0137-5033
Evelien MaeyensFaculty of Engineering Technology, KU Leuven, Leuven, Belgium.
Jeroen BrughmansFaculty of Engineering Technology, KU Leuven, Leuven, Belgium.
Dimitri VargemidisDepartment of Computer Science, KU Leuven, Leuven, Belgium.
Julien LebleumoveUP, Brussels, Belgium.
Leen StulensIn4Care Community vzw, Grimbergen, Belgium.
Sanne BroederIn4Care Community vzw, Grimbergen, Belgium.
Karen GilisZorg Leuven, Leuven, Belgium.
Mieke DeschodtDepartment of Public Health and Primary Care, KU Leuven, Leuven, Belgium.
Benedicte VanwanseeleDepartment of Movement Sciences, KU Leuven, Leuven, Belgium.
David BeckwéeRehabilitation Research Group, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Jette, Belgium.
Moran GilatNeurorehabilitation Research Group (eNRGy), Department of Rehabilitation Sciences, KU Leuven, Leuven, Belgium.
Benjamin FiltjensDepartment of Engineering Systems and Services, Delft University of Technology, Delft, The Netherlands.ORCID https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2609-6883
Bart VanrumsteDepartment of Electrical Engineering (ESAT), KU Leuven, Leuven, Belgium.

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

Regular physical activity preserves functional independence in older adults, yet care-home residents often miss out because personalized supervision is scarce. Autonomous, technology-supported exercise platforms could deliver such guidance without additional staff time-but only if sessions are automatically monitored for safety and quality. We therefore designed a deep learning (DL) system that (a) recognizes individual exercise types and (b) estimates joint angle trajectories from a standard video recording. These outputs are used to compute objective exercise performance metrics (EPMs) such as duration, repetition count, motion variability, and range of motion. Seven care-home residents (aged between 65-94 years) performed six common rehabilitation exercises in front of a single camera while wearing 17 inertial sensors (Xsens MVN Awinda) that provided ground-truth joint angles. Two-dimensional skeleton poses estimated from the video were fed into a temporal convolutional neural network to recognize the exercises and estimate three-dimensional joint angles. We evaluated exercise segmentation with F1@50 and angle regression with mean per-joint angular error (MPJAE) across nine trunk and lower-limb joints, using leave-one-subject-out cross-validation. Pearson correlations assessed agreement between estimated and ground-truth EPMs. The DL model achieved an F1@50 of 0.92 (± 0.04) for exercise recognition and an MPJAE of 7.7° (± 0.91) for joint angle estimation. The estimated EPMs aligned closely with ground truth, achieving correlation scores of 0.93 (95% CI [0.90, 0.95]) for duration, 0.86 (95% CI [0.80, 0.90]) for repetition count, and between 0.3 and 0.9 for motion variability and range of motion across exercises. The DL algorithm reliably estimates key exercise outcomes from a single video stream. This video-based monitoring pipeline could enable unsupervised, technology-supported exercise assessment in residential care homes while safeguarding session quality and safety. Future work will validate the approach in larger and more diverse cohorts.

Identifiers

PMID42560896
PMCPMC13446582

What OpenQuestion holds

Textmetadata
LicenceCC BY
Read underepoch 390

Registered trials

None linked

Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.