General movements (GMs) are the spontaneous gross motor movements involving the whole body. GMs progressively develop as an infant ages. Several recent research studies involving the qualitative assessment of the GMs in infants have validated that GMs, or the lack of, are an accurate way diagnosing a neurological dysfunction in the early stages of infancy. One study has shown that definitely abnormal movements occurring between 10-20 weeks post-term accurately predicted cerebral palsy in infants with an accuracy of 85 to 98 percent [1]. The qualitative method of assessing an infant's GMs is an accurate way of predicting a neurological dysfunction, however, requires the review of hours of video footage by a trained physician. This process is not only time consuming and costly but is subjective in the sense that the results cannot be easily transferred among different institutions. It is also difficult to conduct longitudinal studies without first reviewing the entire history of video footage of the infant's GMs. Improvements can be made to the qualitative GMs assessment method by utilizing recent advances in technology that "can make data collection and analysis more efficient, without compromising competency" [2]. In particular, preliminary research has shown that data collected from"wired" micro-electrical-mechanical systems (MEMS) accelerometers attached to the wrist and ankles of an infant is a feasible way of collecting and characterizing the motion patterns that infants display during GMs [3]. The work presented in this thesis is directed towards improving the past research that used "wired" accelerometers to acquire acceleration signals from the limbs of infants. This thesis describes the process of transitioning the "wired" accelerometers to the wireless level, designing a user-friendly interface to graphically interpret the acceleration data, and assessing the designed system through clinical trials on normal and at-risk infants using the design system. / Master of Science

This present study was intended to identify the reliability and validity of the Vert™ device when compared to a Switch mat. Vert is a wireless device intended to measure jump count and jump height through an application on a smartphone or tablet and the Switch mat provides jump height using wireless sensors. Jump height is an important factor in many sports such as volleyball and basketball and it is important to have devices that coaches and trainers can use for testing that they can rely on. If this device is found to be valid and reliable, coaches and trainers could potentially use it in more practical settings such as practice and games due to the portability and small size. This study consisted of 6 subjects who volunteered. The switch mat was connected to the device to display the jump height immediately after the jump. The Vert sensor was clipped onto the subject’s hip near the center of mass and the jump count and height were then displayed on an app. The subjects completed a series of warm-ups followed by 3 sets of 5 repetition countermovement jumps while using both devices to collect the data. The total 15 jump heights from these 3 sets of 5 were then analyzed using Pearson correlation analysis as well as a paired sample T-test. The jump height recorded from the Vert was consistently about 10 cm off from the jump height of the switch mat, which for a volleyball player, could be the difference between blocking and missing the ball. The results of this study showed that the Vert device is reliable but not practically valid. If technical improvements were made to the device to correct the height components the device could potentially be used in place of a force plate or switch mat when conducting athlete testing but the device is not currently valid for practical use.