Analysis and Quantification of Repetitive Motion in Long-Term Rehabilitation.

Objective assessment in long-term rehabilitation under real-life recording conditions is a challenging task. We propose a data-driven method to evaluate changes in motor function under uncontrolled, long-term conditions with the low-cost Microsoft Kinect sensor. Instead of using human ratings as ground truth data, we propose kinematic features of hand motion, healthy reference trajectories derived by principal component regression, and methods taken from machine learning to analyze the progression of motor function. We demonstrate the capability of this approach on datasets with repetitive unrestrained bi-manual drumming movements in three-dimensional space of stroke survivors, patients suffering of Parkinson's disease, and a healthy control group. We present processing steps to eliminate the influence of varying recording setups under real-life conditions and offer visualization methods to support clinicians in the evaluation of treatment effects.