Movement analysis based on virtual reality and 3D depth sensing camera for whole body rehabilitation

Movement analysis is a complex technique to measure and evaluate the movements of the human body. It can be adopted to support various activities, including rehabilitation. Over the last decade, many systems for capturing human movements have been developed. The most advanced motion capturing systems use image processing techniques through the analysis of live video streams collected from a set of video cameras. These systems are very expensive, need to be installed and used by professionals. Moreover, they are not intended for patient rehabilitation, at home. Rehabilitation can be facilitated and accelerated by using virtual reality and movement analysis assisting systems. This paper describes a rehabilitation system for domestic whole body rehabilitation. It is composed by a virtual reality environment where spatial information of the human body are collected by a 3D depth sensing camera and inserted into the virtual world. The system is designed to perform data analysis by an off-line motion tracking algorithm. A complete set of rehabilitation exercises have been also implemented. A trial exercise is illustrated and discussed.