Acti-DM1: Monitoring the Activity Level of People With Myotonic Dystrophy Type 1 Through Activity and Exercise Recognition

Myotonic dystrophy type 1 (DM1) is a rare disease where the highest prevalence is found in the small geographical region of Saguenay-Lac-St-Jean in Quebec, Canada. This disease impacts the quality of life and the ability of the affected people to pursue their normal day to day activities. To attenuate the impact of DM1, one could suggest that physiotherapists or other health professionals prescribe adapted physical exercise programs to carry out at home. It is, however, unpractical for the professionals to monitor every patient during their program and prohibitive in terms of cost. One alternative solution is to rely on the use of ambient technologies. To do so, in this research, our team developed an assistive system able to recognize simple mobility related activities (MA) and monitor each exercise performed during training sessions. The system can help the person by providing guidance and motivation throughout the training. The system was tested on 10 persons affected by the disease in their home for 10 weeks. The results obtained are encouraging and we discuss them in comparison with our previous work conducted in lab settings. Finally, to help further advances the research, the datasets are openly available online to the community.