Abstract
The hip joint is highly prone to traumatic and degenerative pathologies resulting in irregular locomotion. Monitoring and treatment depend on high-end technology facilities requiring physician and patient co-location, thus limiting access to specialist monitoring and treatment for populations living in rural and remote locations. Telemedicine offers an alternative means of monitoring, negating the need for patient physical presence. In addition, emerging technologies, such as virtual reality (VR) and immersive technologies, offer potential future solutions through virtual presence, where the patient and health professional can meet in a virtual environment (a virtual clinic). To this end, a prototype asynchronous telemedicine VR gait analysis system was designed, aiming to transfer a full clinical facility within the patients’ local proximity. The proposed system employs cost-effective alternative motion capture combined with the system’s immersive 3D virtual gait analysis clinic. The user interface and the tools in the application offer health professionals asynchronous, objective, and subjective analyses. This paper investigates the requirements for the design of such a system and discusses preliminary comparative data of its performance evaluation against a high-fidelity gait analysis clinical application.
Highlights
Advances in modern medicine and better quality of life have resulted in higher life expectancies in the developed world
We propose a novel system that utilises advanced 3D/virtual reality (VR) visualization, motion tracking sensors, and remote data analysis for the acquisition, presentation, and analysis of motion data derived by the patient
Previous research highlights limitations with current clinical gait analysis methodologies in assisting in the rehabilitating of patients [10] primarily relating to lack of time in the health professional-patient interaction
Summary
Advances in modern medicine and better quality of life have resulted in higher life expectancies in the developed world. The population aged 65 years and over is projected to grow by around 50%. The rural areas, in particular, have seen a larger increase in average age than urban areas [2]. Internal migration statistics have shown an increase in population moving into rural locations [3]. Such population migration trends present a number of challenges for the future, in particular regarding access to modern health services. Abnormal gait and locomotion deformities can be a result of various causes. The probability of a gait-related issue increases by
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