Bring It to the Pitch: Combining Video and Movement Data to Enhance Team Sport Analysis

• Published in: IEEE transactions on visualization and computer graphics Vol. 24; no. 1; pp. 13 - 22
• Main Authors: Stein, Manuel, Janetzko, Halldor, Lamprecht, Andreas, Breitkreutz, Thorsten, Zimmermann, Philipp, Goldlucke, Bastian, Schreck, Tobias, Andrienko, Gennady, Grossniklaus, Michael, Keim, Daniel A.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States IEEE 01.01.2018; The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
• Subjects: Analytics; Computer vision; Data visualization; Feature extraction; Image color analysis; immersive analytics; Scientific visualization; Soccer; sport analytics; Trajectory; Trajectory analysis; Video data; visual analytics; Visual observation; Visualization
• ISSN: 1077-2626; 1941-0506; 1941-0506
• DOI: 10.1109/TVCG.2017.2745181

Analysts in professional team sport regularly perform analysis to gain strategic and tactical insights into player and team behavior. Goals of team sport analysis regularly include identification of weaknesses of opposing teams, or assessing performance and improvement potential of a coached team. Current analysis workflows are typically based on the analysis of team videos. Also, analysts can rely on techniques from Information Visualization, to depict e.g., player or ball trajectories. However, video analysis is typically a time-consuming process, where the analyst needs to memorize and annotate scenes. In contrast, visualization typically relies on an abstract data model, often using abstract visual mappings, and is not directly linked to the observed movement context anymore. We propose a visual analytics system that tightly integrates team sport video recordings with abstract visualization of underlying trajectory data. We apply appropriate computer vision techniques to extract trajectory data from video input. Furthermore, we apply advanced trajectory and movement analysis techniques to derive relevant team sport analytic measures for region, event and player analysis in the case of soccer analysis. Our system seamlessly integrates video and visualization modalities, enabling analysts to draw on the advantages of both analysis forms. Several expert studies conducted with team sport analysts indicate the effectiveness of our integrated approach.