Home Self-Training: Visual Feedback for Assisting Physical Activity for Stroke Survivors

Background and Objective: With the increase in the number of stroke survivors, there is an urgent need for designing appropriate home-based rehabilitation tools to reduce health-care costs. The objective is to empower the rehabilitation of post-stroke patients at the comfort of their homes by supporting them while exercising without the physical presence of the therapist. Methods: A novel low-cost home-based training system is introduced. This system is designed as a composition of two linked applications: one for the therapist and another one for the patient. The therapist prescribes personalized exercises remotely, monitors the home-based training and re-adapts the exercises if required. On the other side, the patient loads the prescribed exercises, trains the prescribed exercise while being guided by color-based visual feedback and gets updates about the exercise performance. To achieve that, our system provides three main functionalities, namely: 1) Feedback proposals guiding a personalized exercise session, 2) Posture monitoring optimizing the effectiveness of the session, 3) Assessment of the quality of the motion. Results: The proposed system is evaluated on 10 healthy participants without any previous contact with the system. To analyze the impact of the feedback proposals, we carried out two different experimental sessions: without and with feedback proposals. The obtained results give preliminary assessments about the interest of using such feedback. Conclusions: Obtained results on 10 healthy participants are promising. This encourages to test the system in a realistic clinical context for the rehabilitation of stroke survivors

A RGBD-Based interactive system for gaming-driven rehabilitation of upper limbs

Current physiotherapy services may not be effective or suitable for certain patients due to lack of motivation, poor adherence to exercises, insufficient supervision and feedback or, in the worst case, refusal to continue with the rehabilitation plan. This paper introduces a novel approach for rehabilitation of upper limbs through KineActiv, a platform based on Microsoft Kinect v2 and developed in Unity Engine. KineActiv proposes exergames to encourage patients to perform rehabilitation exercises prescribed by a specialist, controls the patient's performance, and corrects execution errors on the fly. KineActiv comprises a web platform where the physiotherapist can review session results, monitor patient health, and adjust rehabilitation routines. We recruited 10 patients for assessing the system usability as well as the system performance. Results show that KineActiv is a usable, enjoyable and reliable system, that does not cause any negative feelings

Muscle activation behavior in a swimming exergame:Differences by experience and gaming velocity

International audienc

Kvantitativna analiza pokreta u rehabilitaciji neuroloških poremećaja korišćenjem vizuelnih i nosivih senzora.

Neuroloska oboljenja, kao sto su Parkinsonova bolest i slog, dovode do ozbiljnih motornih poremecaja, smanjuju kvalitet zivota pacijenata i mogu da uzrokuju smrt. Rana dijagnoza i adekvatno lecenje su krucijalni faktori za drzanje bolesti pod kontrolom, kako bi se omogucio normalan svakodnevni zivot pacijenata. Lecenje neurolo skih bolesti obicno ukljucuje rehabilitacionu terapiju i terapiju lekovima, koje se prilagodavaju u skladu sa stanjem pacijenta tokom vremena. Tradicionalne tehnike evaluacije u dijagnozi i monitoringu neuroloskih bolesti oslanjaju se na klinicke evaluacione alate, tacnije specijalno dizajnirane klinicke testove i skale. Medutim, iako su korisne i najcesce koriscene, klinicke skale su sklone subjektivnim ocenama i nepreciznoj interpretaciji performanse pacijenta...Neurological disorders, such as Parkinson's disease (PD) and stroke, lead to serious motor disabilities, decrease the patients' quality of life and can cause the mortality. Early diagnosis and adequate disease treatment are thus crucial factors towards keeping the disease under control in order to enable the normal every-day life of patients. The treatment of neurological disorders usually includes the rehabilitation therapy and drug treatment, that are adapted based on the evaluation of the patient state over time. Conventional evaluation techniques for diagnosis and monitoring in neurological disorders rely on the clinical assessment tools i.e. specially designed clinical tests and scales. However, although benecial and commonly used, those scales are descriptive (qualitative), primarily intended to be carried out by a trained neurologist, and are prone to subjective rating and imprecise interpretation of patient's performance..

Muscle activation during Exergame playing

Exergames may provide low-cost solutions for playing, training and rehabilitation. Exergame user research (EUR), studies the interaction between an Exergame and users, in order to provide feedback for game developers and safe and meaningful gameplay. Detailed evaluations and a coding system based on muscle activation levels are necessary to characterize Exergames. This is important when it comes to use exergames in purposes other than fun. The purpose of this chapter was to characterize the muscle activation during a swimming Exergame as an example and to compare the level of activation during different conditions. Healthy subjects played bouts of Exergame using Xbox360 and Kinect. Muscle activation was monitored for desired muscles on dominant upper limb using wireless electromyographic system. Preliminary resutls showed that upper trapezius was the most active muscle in all techniques. An investigation of muscular coordination was also conducted to provide an activation sequences of studied muscles. Results can provide insights for practitioners to have a baseline on application of exergames in their routines

Sistema interactivo de realidad aumentada y gamificación para la rehabilitación y mejora física asistida en entornos no supervisados basado en cámaras RGB-D

Doctorat industrialKineActiv es un sistema que permite la rehabilitación de miembros superiores e inferiores de manera autónoma, no supervisada por un fisioterapeuta. Se ha desarrollado un entorno de realidad aumentada, usado cámaras RGB-D, implementado interfaces avanzadas de usuario y un entorno gamificado, que guía, supervisa y evalúa en tiempo real todos los movimientos del usuario. Permite la ejecución de ejercicios prescritos por un fisioterapeuta para cada paciente. Además, se presenta una adaptación del sistema inicial de rehabilitación para la mejora de la condición física de las personas de la tercera edad. Debido a la pandemia, se detectó un incremento de la degeneración física y cognitiva de las personas mayores por la inactividad y el aislamiento. KineActiv pretende que las personas mayores realicen actividades para mejorar su condición física y cognitiva y que sean autosuficientes. KineActiv, se muestra como un sistema usable y efectivo en la rehabilitación y motivación de personas mayores.KineActiv is a system that allows the rehabilitation of upper and lower limbs in an autonomous way, not supervised by a physiotherapist. An augmented reality environment has been developed, using RGB-D cameras, implementing advanced user interfaces and a gamified environment, which guides, supervises and evaluates all user movements in real time. It allows the execution of exercises prescribed by a physiotherapist for each patient. In addition, an adaptation of the initial rehabilitation system for the improvement of the physical condition of the elderly is presented. Due to the pandemic, an increase in physical and cognitive degeneration of the elderly due to inactivity and isolation was detected. KineActiv wants older people to carry out activities to improve their physical and cognitive condition and to be self-sufficient. KineActiv shows itself as a usable and effective system in the rehabilitation and motivation of the elderly.Programa de Doctorat en Informàtic