Photos of the aging process from the pilot study Source: Verena Klusmann-Weißkopf
“KImAge” project at Furtwangen University presents initial results
The “KImAge” research project at Furtwangen University (HFU) is looking at so-called “age images”. With her team, Dr. Verena Klusmann-Weißkopf, Professor of Health Promotion and Prevention is collecting photographs taken by people of different age groups. Participants are asked to take photos of ageing where they encounter it in everyday life and add a short comment to the picture. For example, a staircase can represent the next steps and stairs that you are looking forward to, but it can also be a barrier that you can no longer climb easily. The images and comments are sorted and catalogued by the project team with the help of artificial intelligence (AI). Then images are analysed in the next step.
Professor Klusmann-Weißkopf and research partner Professor Dr. Benjamin Schüz from the University of Bremen have now published the results of the pilot study. “The evaluation of the first images of old age shows that young people want to enjoy life in old age, but are also afraid of illness,” says Klusmann-Weißkopf, who teaches in the Faculty of Health, Safety and Society on the Furtwangen Campus of HFU. “For people over 50, the focus is on a healthy lifestyle with a healthy diet and physical activity,” explains the professor. “For those over 70, age-appropriate infrastructure becomes particularly important, as it facilitates social participation, health maintenance and an independent lifestyle.”
The next step will be to collect and evaluate photographs of the elderly throughout Germany. “This will allow us to achieve even more differentiated results and better understand how our expectations and perceptions of ageing change over the course of our lives in order to improve communication between the generations,” says Professor Dr. Klusmann-Weißkopf, explaining the aim of the project.
The “KImAge” project is funded by the Carl Zeiss Foundation.
Find out more about the project on the Furtwangen University website at:Internal link opens in the same window: https://www.hs-furtwangen.de/zukunft-forschen/forschungsprojekte/kimage