Vision Based Games for Upper-Limb Stroke Rehabilitation

Recent studies have shown the potential benefits of applying technology to stroke rehabilitation. Traditional rehabilitation tasks are often mundane, and can lead to a lack of patient motivation, resulting in little or no independent patient exercise taking place. We describe a low-cost visual tracking system suitable for upper limb stroke rehabilitation in the home which does not require expensive or special equipment and which can be operated entirely independently by the patient. We look at past applications of imaging to stroke rehabilitation, and also game design theory and how it can be applied to stroke rehabilitation. We then describe two small prototype games which implement colour/object segmentation and motion detection to form the basis of our home rehabilitation system.