IMITASD: Imitation Assessment Model for Children With Autism Based on Human Pose Estimation

Authors

Hany Said, Arab Academy for Science, Technology, and Maritime Transport, El AlameinFollow
Khaled Mahar, Arab Academy for Science, Technology, and Maritime Transport, AlexandriaFollow
Shaymaa E. Sorour, King Faisal UniversityFollow
Ahmed Elsheshai, Arab Academy for Science, Technology, and Maritime Transport, El AlameinFollow
Ramy Shaaban, Utah State UniversityFollow
Mohamed Hesham, Arab Academy for Science, Technology, and Maritime Transport, El AlameinFollow
Mustafa Khadr, Arab Academy for Science, Technology, and Maritime Transport, El AlameinFollow
Youssef A. Mehanna, Arab Academy for Science, Technology, and Maritime Transport, El AlameinFollow
Ammar Basha, Arab Academy for Science, Technology, and Maritime Transport, El AlameinFollow
Fahima A. Maghraby, Arab Academy for Science, Technology, and Maritime Transport, CairoFollow

Document Type

Article

Journal/Book Title/Conference

Mathematics

Author ORCID Identifier

Hany Said https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0351-5248

Khaled Mahar https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3340-6130

Shaymaa E. Sorour https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0805-2705

Ramy Shaaban https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1709-1036

Fahima A. Maghraby https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2547-5673

Volume

12

Issue

21

Publisher

MDPI AG

Publication Date

11-3-2024

Journal Article Version

Version of Record

First Page

1

Last Page

25

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Abstract

Autism is a challenging brain disorder affecting children at global and national scales. Applied behavior analysis is commonly conducted as an efficient medical therapy for children. This paper focused on one paradigm of applied behavior analysis, imitation, where children mimic certain lessons to enhance children’s social behavior and play skills. This paper introduces IMITASD, a practical monitoring assessment model designed to evaluate autistic children’s behaviors efficiently. The proposed model provides an efficient solution for clinics and homes equipped with mid-specification computers attached to webcams. IMITASD automates the scoring of autistic children’s videos while they imitate a series of lessons. The model integrates two core modules: attention estimation and imitation assessment. The attention module monitors the child’s position by tracking the child’s face and determining the head pose. The imitation module extracts a set of crucial key points from both the child’s head and arms to measure the similarity with a reference imitation lesson using dynamic time warping. The model was validated using a refined dataset of 268 videos collected from 11 Egyptian autistic children during conducting six imitation lessons. The analysis demonstrated that IMITASD provides fast scoring, takes less than three seconds, and shows a robust measure as it has a high correlation with scores given by medical therapists, about 0.9, highlighting its effectiveness for children’s training applications.

Recommended Citation

Said, H.; Mahar, K.; Sorour, S.E.; Elsheshai, A.; Shaaban, R.; Hesham, M.; Khadr, M.; Mehanna, Y.A.; Basha, A.; Maghraby, F.A. IMITASD: Imitation Assessment Model for Children with Autism Based on Human Pose Estimation. Mathematics 2024, 12, 3438. https://doi.org/10.3390/math12213438