Egocentric video: a new tool for capturing hand use of individuals with spinal cord injury at home.

Background: Current upper extremity outcome measures for persons with cervical spinal cord injury (cSCI) lack the ability to directly collect quantitative information in home and community environments. A wearable first-person (egocentric) camera system is presented that aims to monitor functional hand use outside of clinical settings.

Methods: The system is based on computer vision algorithms that detect the hand, segment the hand outline, distinguish the user's left or right hand, and detect functional interactions of the hand with objects during activities of daily living.