Improving rehabilitation exercise performance through visual guidance.

Abstract

In current physical rehabilitation protocols, patients typically perform exercises without feedback or guidance following the initial demonstrations from the physiotherapist. This paper proposes a system providing continuous visual feedback and guidance to patients to improve quality of motion performance and adherence to instructions. The system consists of body-worn inertial measurement units which continuously measure the patient's pose. The measured pose is overlaid with the instructed motion on a visual display shown to the user during exercise performance. Two user studies were conducted with healthy participants to evaluate the usability of the visual guidance tool. Motion data was collected by the inertial measurement sensors and used to evaluate quality of motion, comparing user performance with and without visual feedback and with or without exercise guidance. The quantitative and qualitative results of the studies confirm that performing the exercises with the visual guidance tool promotes more consistent exercise performance and proper technique.