Active Human Gesture Capture for Diagnosing and Treating Movement Disorders

Movement disorders prevent many people from enjoying their daily lives. As with other diseases, diagnosis and analysis are key issues in treating such disorders. Computer vision-based motion capture systems are helpful tools for accomplishing this task. However Classical motion tracking systems suffer from several limitations. First they are not cost effective. Second these systems cannot detect minute motions accurately. Finally they are spatially limited to the lab environment where the system is installed. In this project, we propose an innovative solution to solve the abovementioned issues. Mounting the camera on human body, we build a convenient, low cost motion capture system that can be used by the patient in daily-life activities. We refer to this system as active motion capture, which is not confined to the lab environment. Real-time experiments in our lab revealed the robustness and accuracy of the system.