REVIEW article
Front. Sports Act. Living
Sec. Sports Science, Technology and Engineering
Volume 7 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fspor.2025.1604232
This article is part of the Research TopicHarnessing Artificial Intelligence in Sports Science: Enhancing Performance, Health, and EducationView all 10 articles
Quantitative analysis and evaluation of research on the application of computer vision in sports since the 21st century
Provisionally accepted- 1Harbin Sport University, Harbin, China
- 2Université de Montpellier, Montpellier, Languedoc-Roussillon, France
- 3East China University of Technology, Nanchang, Jiangxi Province, China
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The purpose of this paper is to reveal the field's temporal, disciplinary, geographic, journal, and collaborative characteristics and summarize research themes and future trends to promote a systematic understanding of the field within the academic community.To identify research trends, a bibliometric analysis of 1209 publications retrieved from the Science Citation Index Expanded in the Web of Science core database was conducted.In terms of time series, publications in the field grew slowly until 2014, and publications in the field increased significantly after 2015, with polynomial models predicting 206, 233, and 263 annual publications over the next three years. In terms of disciplinary structure, three frontier disciplines utilized interdisciplinary knowledge provided by four basic disciplines to make cuttingedge breakthroughs. Geospatially, there is a three-way split between China, the United States, and the United Kingdom, while most African countries are not involved in the research. Regarding journal distribution, research in this field was published in five Q2 and four Q1 journals, mainly in computing, with fewer contributions from sports journals. The study identifies five principal research themes: skill optimization, health monitoring and injury prevention, physical performance assessment, tactical analysis and referee assistance, and immersive event experiences. Furthermore, it highlights existing research limitations and outlines directions for future exploration.Computer vision research in sports has shown high explosive growth in recent years.The field is interdisciplinary but lacks collaboration among interdisciplinary research teams. The quality of the journals published is high, but the main focus is on computer-based journals. The theme of research in this field is centered on the fundamental characteristic of serving human beings.
Keywords: Sports, Computer Vision, artificial intelligence, health monitoring, injury prevention, referee assistance
Received: 01 Apr 2025; Accepted: 12 May 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Cheng, Xue, Gou and Xie. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Chen Cheng, Harbin Sport University, Harbin, China
Mengning Xie, East China University of Technology, Nanchang, Jiangxi Province, China
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.