Towards a broad use of gamification based on hand tracking in post stroke patients

In the last years, the advent of innovative technologies for tracking human motions is increasing the interest of physicians and physiotherapist, who would like to introduce new instruments for a more objective assessment of the rehabilitation processes. At present, many motion tracking systems have been developed and their ease of use and low-cost may represent the key aspects for which these systems could be really adopted both in rehabilitation centers and in rehabilitation programs at home. Several research studies confirmed the importance of continuing rehabilitation programs at home with the aim to maintain patients’ health condition at a suitable level for daily life activities. Physicians and physiotherapists need methods and tools, which can be simply adaptable for each type of patients’ category and type of rehabilitation according to the assessed pathology. For achieving this need, the technology has to be suitable for both the patient side and medical personnel side. The most suitable technology for the patients are motion tracking devices which can be used through traditional IT, such as laptops, smartphones and tablets. Also for medical personnel the ease of use is very important, physicians would like to check the patient’s rehab exercises according to their medical knowledge by exploiting daily life technology. This research work investigates on which are the best user-friendly programming tools and low-cost technology for 3D hand and finger tracking for the development of a serious game for rehabilitation exercises. The tasks are designed according to physiotherapists’ recommendations, in order to be customizable for any single user. The following sections will describe the method, the tools adopted, and the application developed.