Amprimo, G.; Masi, G.; Priano, L.; Azzaro, C.; Galli, F.; Pettiti, G.; Mauro, A.; Ferraris, C. Assessment Tasks and Virtual Exergames for Remote Monitoring of Parkinson’s Disease: An Integrated Approach Based on Azure Kinect. Sensors2022, 22, 8173.
Amprimo, G.; Masi, G.; Priano, L.; Azzaro, C.; Galli, F.; Pettiti, G.; Mauro, A.; Ferraris, C. Assessment Tasks and Virtual Exergames for Remote Monitoring of Parkinson’s Disease: An Integrated Approach Based on Azure Kinect. Sensors 2022, 22, 8173.
Amprimo, G.; Masi, G.; Priano, L.; Azzaro, C.; Galli, F.; Pettiti, G.; Mauro, A.; Ferraris, C. Assessment Tasks and Virtual Exergames for Remote Monitoring of Parkinson’s Disease: An Integrated Approach Based on Azure Kinect. Sensors2022, 22, 8173.
Amprimo, G.; Masi, G.; Priano, L.; Azzaro, C.; Galli, F.; Pettiti, G.; Mauro, A.; Ferraris, C. Assessment Tasks and Virtual Exergames for Remote Monitoring of Parkinson’s Disease: An Integrated Approach Based on Azure Kinect. Sensors 2022, 22, 8173.
Abstract
Motor impairments are among the most relevant, evident, and disabling symptoms of Parkinson’s disease that adversely affect quality of life, resulting in limited autonomy, independence, and safety. Recent studies have demonstrated the benefits of physiotherapy and rehabilitation programs specifically targeted to the needs of Parkinsonian patients in supporting drug treatments and improving motor control and coordination. However, due to the expected increase of patients in the coming years, traditional rehabilitation pathways in healthcare facilities could become unsustainable. Consequently, new strategies are needed, in which technologies play a key role in enabling more frequent, comprehensive, and out-of-hospital follow-up. The paper proposes a vision-based solution using the new Azure Kinect DK sensor to implement an integrated approach for remote assessment, monitoring, and rehabilitation of Parkinsonian patients, exploiting non-invasive 3D tracking of body movements to objectively and automatically characterize both standard evaluative motor tasks and virtual exergames. Preliminary results show the system’s ability to quantify specific features of motor performance, easily monitor changes and disease progression over time, and the possibility of using exergames to support motor condition assessment and training. The main innovation relies precisely on the integration of evaluative and rehabilitative aspects, which could be used as a closed loop to design new protocols for remote management of patients tailored to their actual conditions.
Keywords
Parkinson’s Disease; Neurorehabilitation; exergames; Azure Kinect; UPDRS; Movement Analysis; body tracking; telemedicine
Subject
Public Health and Healthcare, Other
Copyright:
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.