Kinect-based integrated physiotherapy mentor application for shoulder damage

Abstract

With the increasing rate of disabled people in the world, the number of people in need of physiotherapy is increasing. Most of the disabled persons with shoulder damaged should do physiotherapy exercises. The telerehabilitation systems using developed technologies have advantages over conventional physiotherapy methods. Such systems have the potential to improve communication between patients and physiotherapists. They also allow for easier information and medical data sharing. In this study, a telerehabilitation system based on Kinect Sensor (Kinect 2) was developed to observe and evaluate shoulder damaged patient exercises by using the Kinect skeletal monitoring feature. The proposed system consists of two basic components: the web application that enables the communication between patients and physiotherapists, allows the physiotherapist to observe/update patient exercise data, patients information, and the console application which enables the patients to perform their exercises correctly. This console app was developed for patients with shoulder damage. Abduction, flexion, internal rotation, external rotation, extension exercises can be performed correctly thanks to the developed application. The proposed system was evaluated in Bilecik State Hospital for 29 shoulder damaged volunteers. 14 of the volunteers were treated with the conventional methods and 15 of them were treated with the proposed system. The recovery of the volunteers was analyzed for each intragroup and intergroup comparison was made. Statistically, significant decreases were observed in the limitations of the patients treated with the proposed system. For abduction, flexion, internal rotation, and external rotation exercises, the Kinect-based physiotherapy mentor application was more successful than conventional method, while all volunteers treated by the proposed method had no limitations in extension exercise. As a result, the Kinect-based physiotherapy mentor application can be used as an alternative telerehabilitation method for patients with shoulder damaged.