Date of Award

2015

Degree Type

Thesis

Department

Electrical and Computer Engineering

First Advisor

Zhao, Wenbing

Abstract

In preventive and rehabilitative healthcare, physical exercise is a powerful intervention. However, a program may require in the range of thousands of practice repetitions, and many people do not adhere to the program or perform their home exercises incorrectly, making the exercise ineffective, or even dangerous. This thesis research aims to develop a Kinect-based system for rehabilitation exercises monitoring and guidance. In the first step, a feasibility study was carried out on using Kinect for realtime monitoring of rehabilitation exercises while a multi-camera motion tracking system was used to establish the ground truth. In the second step, a Unity-based system was developed to provide realtime monitoring and guidance to patients. The Unity framework was chosen because it enables us to use virtual reality techniques to demonstrate detailed movements to the patient, and to facilitate examination of the quality and quantity of the patient sessions by the clinician. The avatar-based rendering of motion also preserves the privacy of the patients, which is essential for healthcare systems

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