
NSF Org: |
CBET Division of Chemical, Bioengineering, Environmental, and Transport Systems |
Recipient: |
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Initial Amendment Date: | January 24, 2022 |
Latest Amendment Date: | June 27, 2024 |
Award Number: | 2145473 |
Award Instrument: | Continuing Grant |
Program Manager: |
Amanda O. Esquivel
aesquive@nsf.gov (703)292-0000 CBET Division of Chemical, Bioengineering, Environmental, and Transport Systems ENG Directorate for Engineering |
Start Date: | March 1, 2022 |
End Date: | February 28, 2027 (Estimated) |
Total Intended Award Amount: | $562,597.00 |
Total Awarded Amount to Date: | $562,597.00 |
Funds Obligated to Date: |
FY 2024 = $65,984.00 |
History of Investigator: |
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Recipient Sponsored Research Office: |
5000 FORBES AVE PITTSBURGH PA US 15213-3890 (412)268-8746 |
Sponsor Congressional District: |
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Primary Place of Performance: |
5000 Forbes Avenue PITTSBURGH PA US 15213-3890 |
Primary Place of
Performance Congressional District: |
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Unique Entity Identifier (UEI): |
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Parent UEI: |
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NSF Program(s): |
Disability & Rehab Engineering, BMMB-Biomech & Mechanobiology |
Primary Program Source: |
01002425DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT |
Program Reference Code(s): |
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Program Element Code(s): |
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Award Agency Code: | 4900 |
Fund Agency Code: | 4900 |
Assistance Listing Number(s): | 47.041 |
ABSTRACT
This Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) award focuses on democratizing gait analysis for rehabilitation research and therapy. Mobility is a hallmark of human health, yet mobility limitations continue to reduce personal independence and overall quality of life in nearly a third of Americans. Musculoskeletal conditions alone cost the United States? economy 5% of its overall gross domestic product. Traditionally, mobility has been studied in gait laboratories, with expensive equipment, trained personnel, and time-consuming data processing pipelines, limiting studies in size, setting, and monitoring time. Recent advances in computer vision and wearable sensing could bring motion tracking with smartphones and wearable sensors to laboratories, clinics, and patient homes at negligible costs, growing studies from tens to thousands of subjects. Current approaches for motion tracking from videos and wearables, however, remain insufficiently accurate for research and clinical translation. One of the challenges is that they are primarily data-driven, relying on limited training data that do not include patients with mobility limitations. This project will merge the complementary strengths of artificial intelligence (AI) and physics-based modeling into a new motion-tracking paradigm that is widely accessible, dynamically robust, and equitably accurate across human demographics and abilities.
The technical objectives of this project are to (1) create and evaluate a new computational framework for musculoskeletal modeling with wearable sensors and smartphone videos, and (2) use this framework to answer fundamental questions about the role of cyclic loading on cartilage health. This work will empower biomechanical engineers and rehabilitation specialists by fundamentally changing the amount and type of data they use to answer scientific questions around mobility limitations. The technical contributions will integrate multibody dynamics with state-of-the-art machine learning models to enable accurate motion tracking from wearable sensors and smartphone cameras. Additionally, subject-specific anatomy from medical images will be incorporated into these modeling frameworks to enable the estimation of internal biomechanics. The scientific contributions will advance the field of orthopaedic rehabilitation by generating previously unavailable knowledge on how subject-specific joint mechanics modulate cartilage response to cyclic loading in natural environments, which will be critical in the design of personalized rehabilitation technologies for osteoarthritis prevention. The project will also leverage the pop-science appeal and practical utility of AI to inspire, train, and retain the next generation of multidimensionally diverse rehabilitation engineers. Activities include (1) collaborative outreach events with Facebook Reality Labs to expose Pittsburgh area K-12 students to futuristic motion capture facilities (Inspire), (2) educational software that synergistically generates annotated datasets to improve computer-vision algorithms, while teaching high-school students about trustworthy AI (Train), and (3) an AI toolkit that promotes equity and inclusion in higher education (Retain).
This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
PUBLICATIONS PRODUCED AS A RESULT OF THIS RESEARCH
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