Hand motion capture for medical usage

Abstract

The authors propose, not a non-contact devise which our research group has been developing, but a compact wearable device which allows for estimation of the hand pose (hand motion capture) of the subject. The devise has a miniature wireless RGB camera on the back side of user's hand, rather than the palm side. Attachment of the small camera on the back side of the hand may make it possible to minimize the restraint on the subject's motions during motion capture. The conventional techniques attach the camera on the palm side of the hand for the reason that the images of fingertips always need to be captured by the camera before any other parts of the hand. In contrast, our image processing algorism, the authors propose here, is capable of estimating the hand pose with no need for capturing first the fingertips. Our system allows doing hand and finger motion capture without his psychological burden and physical constraints in clinical diagnosis.