Kushkalla: A web-based platform to improve functional movement rehabilitation

Abstract

Telerehabilitation is a growing alternative to traditional face-to-face therapy, which uses technological solutions to cover rehabilitation care in both clinical centers and in-home programs. However, the current telerehabilitation systems are limited to deliver a set of exercise programs for some specific locomotor disability, without including tools that allow a quantitative analysis of the rehabilitation progress, in real-time, as well as the medical condition of patients. This paper presents the design and development of a novel web-based platform, named “Kushkalla”, that allows to perform movement assessment for creating personalized home-based therapy routines, integrating hardware and software tools for a quantitative analysis of locomotor movements based on motion capture, preprocessing, monitoring, visualization, storage and analysis, in real-time. The platform combines two motion capture strategies, the Kinect-based and IMU-based motion capture. In addition, a set of 2D and 3D graphical models, virtual environments, based on WebGL technology, and videoconference module are included to allow the interaction between user and clinician for enhancing the capability of the clinician to direct rehabilitation therapies.