Towards pervasive physical rehabilitation using Microsoft Kinect

The use of Virtual Reality technology for developing tools for rehabilitation has attracted significant interest in the physical therapy arena. This paper presents a comparison of motion tracking performance between the low-cost Microsoft Kinect and the high fidelity OptiTrack optical system. Data is collected on six upper limb motor tasks that have been incorporated into a game-based rehabilitation application. The experiment results show that Kinect can achieve competitive motion tracking performance as OptiTrack and provide “pervasive” accessibility that enables patients to take rehabilitation treatment in clinic and home environment.