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    Wood (1982) Data Smoothing

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    Pablo Galindos

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    © All Rights Reserved
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    DATA SMOOTHING AND DIFFERENTIATION PROCEDURES IN BIOMECHANICS Graeme A. Wood Department of Human Movement and Recreation Studies University of Western Australia Nedlands, Australia “‘When you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it.’’ (William Thomson, Lord Kelvin. Popular Lectures and Addresses, 1891-1894) INTRODUCTION The Problem In many scientific fields a continuous process is measured at discrete ‘oints and, on the basis of these observations, the scientist attempts to xplain the nature of the underlying process. These observations are, how- ver, usually prone to error, and the scientist can be faced with the dilemma epicted in Figure 1. . Clearly in this example additional! observations, either at new points in t, ‘rat the same points (thereby obtaining an estimate of the magnitude of the “he author gratefully acknowledges the valuable advice of Dr. Les Jennings and Dr. ohn Henstridge of the Departments of Mathematics and Biometrics, The Univer- ity of Western Australia, during the preparation of this paper. Data Smoothing and Differentiation °o an error ? OR a damped oscillation ? pe Figure 1. Problems in fitting an empirical equation to discrete data points. 309 measurement error), would help to resolve the matter. Or, if some a priori knowledge were available concerning the nature of the underlying function, the problem would be simplified, but certain model parameters would still need to be determined. Fitting an empirical equation to data is usually done as a basis for theory development, or as a means of obtaining new measures. Examples of the first instance would be the identification of components in a muscular fatigue curve (44), establishment of a force-velocity relationship (38), or analysis of human growth curves (73), while prediction of future perform- ance records (55) and determination of velocity and acceleration from posi- 310 G.A. Wood tion-time data would be examples of the latter instance. In all instances. sci- entists attempt to obtain the simplest representation of the data that ade- quately describes the underlying process, while eliminating from considera- tion data scatter arising from experimental errors. This process is usually referred to as ‘‘curve fitting”’ or ‘‘data smoothing.” Measurement of interna) and external forces and the motions arising from them is fundamental to the study of biomechanics. While in many instances a biomechanist may only be concerned with the measurement and description of motion, this is not an easy task, for animal and human move- ment patterns can be very complex and the measurement process is quite error-prone. Typically, body position is recorded at discrete points in time, and other kinematic variables (velocity and acceleration) are obtained by numerical differentiation. When measures of the causal variables (the mus- cle and joint forces) or of the segmental and whole-body energetics are required, they cannot be determined by direct means and must therefore be derived from measures of body motion. This inverse dynamics approach evolves from the Newtonian expressions =iF=m-a and Lela That is, the resultant force (F) and moment of force (M) acting on a body of known mass (m) and moment of inertia (I) can be indirectly determined from its acceleration behavior (a and a). This calculation requires not only accurate measures of body motion, but also estimates of body segment parameters (/5/.* Instantaneous acceleration of a body can be produced by direct methods through the use of electromechanical devices (accelerometers}. or, as men- tioned above. by double differentiation of displacement-time records. The direct approach suffers from the disadvantage that absolute body position cannot be readily determined (62) and fixation to the body is difficult. while numerical differentiation amplifies small errors in displacement-time data to an extent that is alarming, as the error can occur with relatively high fre- quency (5, /4, 49, 95). To illustrate the differentiation problem, consider a sinusoidal motion of frequency f as depicted in Figure 2a, with some added measurement error in the form of another sinusoid of frequency 10 x f but of one-tenth the ampli- tude. In communications-engineering parlance, the signal-to-noise ratio is 10:1. Upon differentiation, the noise is found to,be of equal amplitude to the signal (Figure 2b), and when differentiated twi¢e, it becomes 100 times the signal value (Figure 2c). That the amplitude of the first derivative is proportional to f, and that of the second derivative is proportional to f?. *Information on body segment parameters can be found elsewhere (61). Data Smoothing and Differentiation 311 Since the process of differentiation preferentially amplifies higher- frequency components, the motion analyst is presented with a problem, for human movements are generally, of low frequency /8, 95), while measure- ment errors span the whole frequency spectrum (see Figure 2d). Therefore. the biomechanist not only seeks an empirical function that adequately describes the processes underlying displacement-time data, but also tries to minimize the effect of measurement errors that will destroy the validity of derived measures. To this end various procedures have been employed in biomechanics. as this paper will show. While this work was written from a biomechanist’s perspective, the material is equally applicable to any area of the exercise and sport sciences where data smoothing/curve fitting and differentiation/integration procedures are required. Before proceeding, it is useful to consider the nature and sources of error, for much of the problem lies in the manner in which experimental data are gathered. Sources of Error The sources of error associated with the gathering of displacement-time data are numerous and often mentioned by investigators, but there have been few reported systematic studies of measurement errors. The following list. compiled from several references (39, 66, 86, 95, 107), details some of the potential sources of error associated with displacement-time data obtained by the methodology most commonly used in biomechanics, i.e., cinematography. Error sources include misalignment of the camera; per- spective error due to objects (subject or scale) out of the photographic plane; stretching of film or imperfect registration of film in camera or pro- jector; movement of camera or projector; distortion due to optical system of camera or projector; graininess of film; movement of body segment mar- kers in relation to joint axes of rotation, either through skin movement or axial rotation of the segment; precision limits in the digitization process; errors in recording temporal and spatial scales; and operator errors of judgement and parailax in locating joint axes of rotation. Some errors arising from these sources can be described as systematic in that they introduce consistent biases into the data. Such errors include image distortion, inaccurate scales, and placement of body markers. Sys- tematic errors can also result from drift in a body marker’s position with respect to an anatomical landmark, or from an analyst’s faulty perception of where an anatomical point or joint center lies (these factors co-vary with movement). Such errors can only be eliminated by adherence to sound cine- matographic procedures /6/, 72), adoption of 3-D filming techniques (6/, 87), or adequate training of personnel. Data smoothing will seldom help in this regard, for the apparent trends introduced into displacement-time data through systematic errors are usually of a lower frequency than the real motion, i.e.. less than 10 hertz (Hz). 312 M

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