[ARTICLE] A Review on Technical and Clinical Impact of Microsoft Kinect on Physical Therapy and Rehabilitation – Full Text HTML

Abstract

This paper reviews technical and clinical impact of the Microsoft Kinect in physical therapy and rehabilitation. It covers the studies on patients with neurological disorders including stroke, Parkinson’s, cerebral palsy, and MS as well as the elderly patients. Search results in Pubmed and Google scholar reveal increasing interest in using Kinect in medical application. Relevant papers are reviewed and divided into three groups: (1) papers which evaluated Kinect’s accuracy and reliability, (2) papers which used Kinect for a rehabilitation system and provided clinical evaluation involving patients, and (3) papers which proposed a Kinect-based system for rehabilitation but fell short of providing clinical validation. At last, to serve as technical comparison to help future rehabilitation design other sensors similar to Kinect are reviewed.

1. Introduction

Traditionally, a great portion of physical therapy and rehabilitation assessment of stroke patients is based on a therapist’s observation and judgment. The assessments methods (e.g., Fugl-Meyer et al. Assessment of Physical Performance [1]) rely heavily on the therapists visual assessment of how the patient is performing a standard task. This process needs a trained Physical Therapist (PT) or Occupational Therapist (OCT) to spend one on one time with the patient. Yet, the assessment can be inaccurate for several reasons one of which is the subjectivity of these behavioral and clinical assessments. Sensor and computing technology that can be used for motion capture have advanced drastically in the past few years; they have become more capable and affordable. Motion capture systems (MoCap) record human body’s kinematic data with high accuracy and reliability; analysis of MoCap data results in better clinical and behavioral assessment and more efficient therapeutic decision making accordingly.

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