Automated Face Blurring and Human Movement Kinematics Extraction from Videos Recorded in Clinical Settings

View a PDF of the paper titled SecurePose: Automated Face Blurring and Human Movement Kinematics Extraction from Videos Recorded in Clinical Settings, by Rishabh Bajpai and Bhooma Aravamuthan

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Abstract:Movement disorder diagnosis often relies on expert evaluation of patient videos, but sharing these videos poses privacy risks. Current methods for de-identifying videos, such as blurring faces, are often manual, inconsistent, or inaccurate. Furthermore, these methods can compromise objective kinematic analysis – a crucial component of diagnosis. To address these challenges, we developed SecurePose, an open-source software that simultaneously provides reliable de-identification and automated kinematic extraction from videos recorded in clinic settings using smartphones/tablets. SecurePose utilizes pose estimation (using OpenPose) to extract full body kinematics, track individuals, identify the patient, and then accurately blur faces in the videos. We validated SecurePose on gait videos recorded in outpatient clinic visits of 116 children with cerebral palsy, assessing both the accuracy of its de-identification compared to the ground truth (manual blurring) and the reliability of the intermediate steps of kinematics extraction. Results demonstrate that SecurePose outperformed six existing methods in automated face detection and achieved comparable accuracy to robust manual blurring, but in significantly less time (91.08% faster). Ten experienced researchers also confirmed SecurePose’s usability via System Usability Scale scores. These findings validate SecurePose as a practical and effective tool for protecting patient privacy while enabling accurate kinematics extraction in clinical settings.