Balance Disorder Rehabilitation through Movement Interaction

Abstract

Neuro-rehabilitation process usually implies the patients' need of going to medical centers. This situation makes patients go out of their daily life environment and routine. In this way, authors have developed a system that allows balance disorder patients to perform a specific rehabilitation exercise (to control the balance when walking) at home. Thanks to that, the patients are able to recover from their disability in a more comfortable and appropriate environment always under the physiotherapist supervision. In this sense, the system complements the physiotherapists' work, avoiding in many cases the need of their presence during the repetition of the rehabilitation exercise. To that end, the system is based on movement interaction through Kinect devices and a specific framework which analyzes the patients' movements in order to generate adequate indications and corrections during the rehabilitation process. Medical staff finds the system as an assistant tool with which enables to control the rehabilitation process in the distance if patients' conditions allow.