Development and Application of a Motion Analysis Protocol for the Kinematic Evaluation of Basic and Functional Hand and Finger Movements Using Motion Capture in a Clinical Setting—A Repeatability Study

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to develop a motion analysis protocol that allows the simultaneous assessment of all hand and finger joint movements. The objective was to demonstrate repeatability for future clinical applications in functional assessments. This study includes selection of marker positions, movement tasks, kinematic approaches and a comparison of the two most commonly used finger marker sets. By using a test–retest measurement of the range of motion in twenty healthy volunteers, the repeatability of the developed protocol was validated. Estimated errors of the presented method ranged from 1.2° to 6.4°. Finger joint angles derived from the marker set with two markers per segment showed better repeatability (3.7°) than with markers located on the joints (5.1°). Given the high repeatability found, the presented method appears to be suitable for clinical applications. For the fingers, measurement repeatability can be improved by using at least two markers per segment. Within this study, advanced kinematic approaches, such as functional determination of joint centers and axes, are applied to the analysis of hand movements. The provided standard values and estimate of the minimal detectable differences provide a valuable basis for meaningful data interpretation and may be used for future comparison with other protocols.

Synergy-Based Sensor Reduction for Recording the Whole Hand Kinematics

“…The cameras are calibrated to track the movement of the markers, which can be reflective (passive markers) or self-illuminated (active markers). Four different skin marker sets are commonly used to record hand motion [ 16 , 17 , 18 ]: “one marker per segment”, where one marker is positioned at each joint; “two markers per segment”, with markers at the distal and proximal heads of each segment; and “three markers per segment”, where markers are placed forming a triangle on each segment. Methods with one or two markers are prone to larger skin movements, because the joint heads of the fingers have many wrinkles in the skin [ 19 , 20 ].…”

Simultaneous Estimation of Hand Configurations and Finger Joint Angles Using Forearm Ultrasound

“…The experimental setup uses a Vantage 128 Verasonics ultrasound data acquisition system (Verasonics, WA, USA) and a Vicon Nexus motion capture system (Vicon Motion Systems Ltd., UK). The average estimated error linked to the MCP joint angle ground-truth estimation using the Vicon Nexus motion capture system has been reported to be less than the acceptable 5 • except for the pinky MCP joint angle standard error of measurement which is less than 6 • [49].…”

In Vivo Measurement of Wrist Movements during the Dart-Throwing Motion Using Inertial Measurement Units

“…Small gaps in marker recordings were filled using VICON ® Nexus’ built-in gap filling routine. Further data analysis was carried out in Matlab (R2016b) using the same approach described in [ 9 ], which is based on marker clusters considered as rigid bodies with the wrist joint centers determined by a functional approach [ 15 , 16 , 17 ], with the joint center simulated as a ball joint and the flexion axis as a hinge joint. Joint movements were calculated according to [ 18 ].…”

“…Subsequently, the relative movement of the centroids for the OMC1 and OMC2 marker clusters were determined with respect to the reference position for the hand and forearm segment. By means of a projection on the segmental coordinate axes [ 17 ], the relative movement of the cluster centroids was assigned to the anatomical planes. The MAD and the peak change in centroid distance was calculated.…”