Automatic quantification of handwriting characteristics before and after rehabilitation
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Handwriting represents a complex motor behaviour recently analysed by using direct measurements carried out by digitizing tablets. This technology allows objective quantitative kinematic analyses of the quality of writing and can be used to study handwriting disturbances, that can be found in primary school-aged children, as well as the effects of a rehabilitation treatment.
The aim of this paper is to present a system able to analyse handwriting movements produced by children presenting dysgraphia, submitted to a rehabilitation treatment. The writing task consisted of a sequence of ‘lelele’, written by the subjects before and after a suitable spatio-temporal rehabilitation treatment (Terzi's method). Handwriting samples from 14 non-proficient handwriters children attending primary school were collected before and after rehabilitation, with the aid of a digitizing tablet (Intuos3®, Watcom). The movements were segmented and each identified stroke was analysed by a suitable ad hoc software that calculated a series of static and kinematic parameters linked to pressure, trajectory and velocity features of the tract, in order to measure the procedure efficacy.
By means of the realized system significant differences in handwriting characteristics estimated before and after treatment were found. In particular a significant increase of the mean pressure calculated on each stroke (p<0.001) as well as an increment of the mean velocity during single stroke (p<0.02) and the mean width of a stroke (p<0.02) were pointed out. Significant differences were also found for the mean velocity along the whole curvilinear written tract (p<0.02) between the two conditions. On average the subjects improved in speed of writing after the intervention period thus demonstrating the efficacy of the Terzi's method therapy.
These results demonstrated the potential of the realized system that provides quantitative spatio-temporal measures of handwriting performance, useful for the evaluation and treatment assessment of handwriting difficulties.
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