Tele-rehabilitation booming with Kinect

At a panel discussion at the American Telemedicine Association trade show,  Dr. Kouroush Parsapour said that physical therapy in the United States is approaching crisis, so much so that by 2030, the number of states with sub-standard physical therapy will increase from 12 to 48.  With this in mind he created 5plus Therapy, a startup that works on building digital health physical therapy tools.

At 5plus Therapy, Parsapour uses Microsoft’s Kinect to measure a patient’s movement, a task that he had previously performed with a goniometer. Parsapour is not alone. A number of tele-rehabilitation startup companies nationwide are using the Kinect. 

Reflexion Health, has started clinical trials to validate the technology. Reflexion offers a rehab measurement tool that uses Kinect to instruct the patient on exercises and measure whether they are performing their exercises correctly. 

MobiHealthNews has a list of nine companies that are using digital rehabilitation solutions, all of which use or plan to use the Microsoft Kinect. 

Microsoft Kinect can be used for rehab, weightlifting, medical record review, death mask creation, tracking workers and identifying car defects.   

Last week I wrote about how video games may be able to help improve 3D vision in adults with lazy eye. In that blog I mentioned how I was never a fan of video games, but with all of the good they are capable of, should I give them a second chance?

Crash detector

Using one of those new-fangled computer tablets while walking along the street can be a dangerous affair.

Just the other day, for example, I saw one self-absorbed individual who collided with another pedestrian while strolling down a pedestrian precinct as he used such a tablet to surf the internet.

It could have been a whole lot worse. He could have walked into something a lot harder, such as a brick wall or a lamp post, and caused some serious injuries to either himself or the infrastructure.

One answer to this problem, of course, is not to use such mobile devices while walking, and concentrate on negotiating the environment instead. But these days, when we all like to be permanently wired into the web, many individuals are unlikely to heed such practical advice.

Recognizing that fact, a team of researchers at the University of Manitoba (Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada) have now developed a rather nifty little vision-based system that could be the answer to mobile users' prayers.

Their so-called "CrashAlert" system augments mobile devices such as tablets with a Microsoft Kinect depth camera to provide distance and location visual cues of obstacles on a user's path. The Kinect camera itself is connected to a battery powered laptop computer carried in a backpack via a USB connection. When it receives images from the Kinect, it processes them and sends them off to the tablet via a Bluetooth connection.

In this way, a user can see their surroundings on the tablet while they walk, dodging and slowing down or lifting their head to avoid any potential collisions and related injuries.

Now the cynics amongst my blog followers might consider that hauling around a bulky computer and a Kinect system in a backpack completely defeats the purpose of using a lightweight tablet in the first place. And, of course, they're probably right.

But if such a system was miniaturized and actually fitted to the tablet itself, then it might actually prove to be of some practical use. And I'm sure that such systems will be in the future.

A research paper entitled "Crash Alert: Enhancing Peripheral Alertness for Eyes-Busy Mobile Interaction while Walking," by Manitoba University researchers Juan David Hincapié-Ramos and Pourang Irani is available on the internet here. Just don't read it on a tablet while attempting to negotiate a busy pedestrian precinct.

Editor's note: Interested in reading more about novel uses of the Kinect? Then why not browse through our recent slideshow here.

No vision at all

Anyone with an X-Box hooked up to a Kinect camera will appreciate the fact that gesture recognition has added all sorts of interactive possibilities to gaming that simply weren't possible before.

But a vision system isn't the only way of detecting the gestures of individuals to enable them to control computer systems, as one company proved this month when it launched an alternative gesture recognition technology that might challenge the role of vision in certain applications.

That company was none other than Microchip Technology (Chandler, AZ, USA), whose so-called GestIC system is based on the idea of equipping a device such as a tablet PC with a number of thin electrodes that create an electric field around the device when an electric current is passed through them.

Once a user's hand then moves into the area around the tablet, the electrical field distribution becomes distorted as the electrical field lines intercepted by the hand are shunted to ground through the human body. The distortion of the field is then detected by a number of receiver electrodes integrated onto the top layer of the device.

To support this concept, Microchip Technology has -- as you might have expected -- produced an integrated circuit named the MGC3130 that not only acts as a signal generator but also contains signal conditioning and analog to digital converters that convert the analog signals from the receivers into a digital format.

Once they are in that format, a 32-bit signal processor analyses the signals using an on-chip software suite that can track the x/y/z position of the hand as well as determine the gestures of a user. These are then relayed to an applications processor in the system that performs commands such as opening applications, pointing, clicking, zooming and scrolling.

While the folks at Microchip Technology believe that the GestIC system will enable the "next breakthrough in human-machine-interface design", and are touting the fact that it offers the lowest power consumption of any 3-D sensing technology -- the technology is still limited to a detection range of up to 15 cm.

So while it does offer an interesting alternative to a camera-based system, I don't think that the folks at Microsoft will be too worried that it will ever compete with their Kinect camera.

Samples of Microchip's MGC3130 -- which comes in a 5x5 mm 28-pin QFN package -- are available today. Volume production is expected in April 2013 at $2.26 each in high volumes. An evaluation kit is available today for $169. More information is available here.

Walk this way

As the editor of Vision Systems Design, I get to fly around a lot during the course of my work. But during my travels, there is little time to observe the behavior of the individuals in the various countries that I visit.

However, that's definitely something in which Dr. Rajshree Mootanah, the Director of the Medical Engineering Research Group at Anglia Ruskin University (Chelmsford, Essex) in the UK is interested.

You see, the learned doctor is currently involved in a project to measure the gait of individuals with the aim of using the data he acquires as a measure by which the joint functions of those who have just undergone hip or knee surgery can be assessed.

Now a lot of work in this area has already been carried out by researchers at the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York, one of the leading hospitals for orthopedics in the US. But the trouble is that the database of normal gaits from that hospital was captured, naturally enough, from New Yorkers.

Dr. Mootanah believes that the people in the county of Essex in the UK are likely to have a different gait to New Yorkers, and that his research project to establish a local database will allow more accurate testing and analysis of UK patients.

"The only database we have is of the New York population and we believe there may be slight but still significant differences to the way our local population walks due to the different racial make-up of the two groups," Dr. Mootanah says.

For that reason, his team is now on the lookout for volunteers, aged 18 or over, who are able to walk without impediment. The volunteers will have the force of their steps measured by special pressure plates embedded in the floor while their gait will be recorded by a 3-D motion capture system.

The results from Mootanah's research will certainly be interesting and may be more useful that he realizes. According to the New York Times, five studies presented at the Alzheimer’s Association International Conference in Vancouver this month provided striking evidence that when a person's walk gets slower or becomes more variable or less controlled, his cognitive function is also suffering.

So not only could the database created by Mootanah be useful as a means to evaluate patients who have undergone surgery, it might also provide a valuable tool to other researchers who might also use it to evaluate the cognitive functions of individuals.

Reference: Footprints to Cognitive Decline and Alzheimer's Are seen in Gait, The New York Times, July 16, 2012.

What's next for Kinect?

This past Monday, Microsoft's Craig Eisler formally announced that new Kinect for Windows hardware and accompanying software would be available from February 1 this year in 12 countries including the US at a suggested retail price of $249.

Microsoft has chosen a hardware-only business model for Kinect for Windows, which means that the company will not be charging for the software development kit (SDK) or the runtime system. These will be available free to developers and end users, respectively. Independent developers will not pay license fees for the Kinect for Windows software or the ongoing software updates, and new Kinect for Windows hardware will be supported by Microsoft.

Of particular interest to developers will be new firmware that enables the depth camera to see objects as close as 50 cm in front of the device without losing accuracy or precision, with graceful degradation down to 40 cm.

The $249 price tag includes a one-year warranty and access to ongoing software updates for both speech and human tracking. Later this year, the company will offer special academic pricing (planned at $149) for qualified educational users.

Addressing the reason why the pricing of the Kinect for Windows system was higher than the Kinect for Xbox system, Eisler said that Microsoft's ability to sell Kinect for Xbox 360 at its current price point is in large part subsidized by consumers buying a number of Kinect games, subscribing to Xbox Live, and making other transactions associated with the Xbox 360.

In addition, he said that the Kinect for Xbox 360 was built for and tested with the Xbox 360 console only, which is why it was not licensed for general commercial use, supported, or under warranty when used on any other platform.

The news will undoubtedly be greeted with some interest by system developers who may now consider using the Kinect system in a variety of manufacturing and retail applications.

Those who might still be somewhat skeptical should note that -- during a keynote speech at the CES show (Las Vegas, Nevada) -- Microsoft's Steve Ballmer announced that Siemens, Citi, Boeing, American Express, Unilever, United Health Group, Mattel, and Toyota are just some of the companies that Microsoft is already working with to develop Kinect-based systems.

Clearly, Microsoft has great hopes that the platform will be successful outside the gaming arena. And if you have an interesting idea of how you could use the Kinect system, then you might like to consider taking part in a Microsoft's initiative called the Kinect Accelerator incubation project, which is run by Microsoft BizSpark.

The project will give ten successful companies an investment of $20,000 each to develop a system around the Kinect on either Windows or Xbox 360. At the end of the program, each company will have an opportunity to present at an Investor Demo Day to angel investors, venture capitalists, Microsoft executives, and media and industry professionals.

Applications are being accepted through Jan. 25, 2012, so there's still time to make a proposal.