An Interactive and Low-Cost Full Body Rehabilitation Framework Based on 3D Immersive Serious Games

Publication date: Available online 3 December 2018Source: Journal of Biomedical InformaticsAuthor(s): Danilo Avola, Luigi Cinque, Gian Luca Foresti, Marco Raoul MariniAbstractStrokes, surgeries, or degenerative diseases can impair motor abilities and balance. Long-term rehabilitation is often the only way to recover, as completely as possible, these lost skills. To be effective, this type of rehabilitation should follow three main rules. First, rehabilitation exercises should be able to keep patient's motivation high. Second, each exercise should be customizable depending on patient's needs. Third, patient's performance should be evaluated objectively, i.e., by measuring patient's movements with respect to an optimal reference model. To meet the just reported requirements, in this paper, an interactive and low-cost full body rehabilitation framework for the generation of 3D immersive serious games is proposed. The framework combines two Natural User Interfaces (NUIs), for hand and body modeling, respectively, and a Head Mounted Display (HMD) to provide the patient with an interactive and highly defined Virtual Environment (VE) for playing with stimulating rehabilitation exercises. The paper presents the overall architecture of the framework, including the environment for the generation of the pilot serious games and the main features of the used hand and body models. The effectiveness of the proposed system is shown on a group of ninety-two patients. In a first stage, a pool ...
Source: Journal of Biomedical Informatics - Category: Information Technology Source Type: research