Measuring energy expenditure in sports by thermal video analysis

Estimation of human energy expenditure in sports and exercise contributes to performance analyses and tracking of physical activity levels. The focus of this work is to develop a video-based method for estimation of energy expenditure in athletes. We propose a method using thermal video analysis to automatically extract the cyclic motion pattern, in walking and running represented as steps, and analyse the frequency. Experiments are performed with one subject in two different tests, each at 5, 8, 10, and 12 km/h. The results of our proposed video-based method is compared to concurrent measurements of oxygen uptake. These initial experiments indicate a correlation between estimated step frequency and oxygen uptake. Based on the preliminary results we conclude that the proposed method has potential as a future non-invasive approach to estimate energy expenditure during sports.