Evaluating the intra- and inter-day reliability of output measures for the VALD HumanTrak: dynamic movements and range of motion of the shoulder and hip with body armour

The HumanTrak captures human movement through markerless motion tracking and can be a crucial tool in military physical screening. Reliability was examined in eighteen healthy participants who completed shoulder and hip ROM, and dynamic tasks in three body armour conditions. Generally, for all conditions, good to excellent reliability was observed in shoulder abduction and flexion, hip abduction and adduction, and dynamic squats knee and hip flexion (ICC >= 0.75 excluding outliers). Shoulder adduction and hip flexion demonstrated moderate to excellent reliability (ICC >= 0.50). Shoulder and hip extension and the drop jump were unreliable (ICC: 0.10-0.94, 0.15-0.89, and 0.30-0.82, respectively) due to the large distribution of ICC scores. Tasks with ROM values >= 100 degrees involving movement towards or perpendicular to the HumanTrak camera tended to have greater reliability than movements moving away from the camera and out of the perpendicular plane regardless if body armour was worn. Practitioner summary: The HumanTrak analyses ROM in a time-efficient manner in a military setting. This study established that shoulder abduction and adduction (no body armour) and shoulder, hip, and knee flexion were the most reliable measurement for all conditions. Further work is required for movements across different planes.

Automated summary

The HumanTrak is a tool that captures human movement through markerless motion tracking and plays a crucial role in military physical screening. The study found good to excellent reliability for shoulder and hip range of motion (ROM) measurements and dynamic tasks. However, reliability varied for different movements and body armour conditions. Further research is needed to investigate movements across different planes.