Estimations of 3D velocities from a single camera view in ice hockey

Abstract: Ice hockey is a contact sport with a high risk of brain injuries such as concussions. This is a serious health concern and there is a need of better understanding of the relationship between the kinematics of the head and concussions. The velocity and the direction of impact are factors that might affect the severity of the concussions. Therefore the understanding of concussions can be improved by extracting velocities from video analysis. In this thesis a prototype to extract 3D velocities from one single camera view was developed by using target tracking algorithms and homography. A validation of the method was done where the mean error was estimated to 21.7%. The prototype evaluated 60 cases of tackles where 30 resulted in concussions and the other 30 tackles did not result in concussions. No significant difference in the velocities between the two groups could be found. The mean velocity for the tackles that resulted in concussions were 6.55 m/s for the attacking player and 4.59 m/s for the injured player. The prototype was also compared with velocities extracted through SkillSpector from a previous bachelor thesis. There was a significant difference between the velocities compiled with SkillSpector and the developed prototype in this thesis. A validation of SkillSpector was also made, which showed that it had a mean error of 37.4%.