A Visual Evaluation Framework for In-Home Physical Rehabilitation

We propose a novel method for in-home physical rehabilitation, where a user can visually evaluate his/her performance compared to that of an expert. Normalized joint coordinates extracted from the Kinect skeleton are used as features. A novel Incremental Dynamic Time Warping (IDTW) algorithm is used to align the user and expert sequences. IDTW extends the classic DTW by providing accurate comparison between incomplete (the user´s) and complete (the expert´s) sequences while significantly reducing the computational time. Instead of providing a single measurement, the proposed method maps the IDTW measurements to a color-coded skeleton frame. Different colors on the limbs provide the user with an easy-to-interpret evaluation of how he or she is performing. Preliminary analysis involving different users and exercises and comparisons against the classic DTW algorithm show the effectiveness of the proposed method.