Saturday 26 May 2012

Inside Kinect - for those interested!

Anyone interested in how the Kinect works should take a look at the following link. It explains the cameras and mechanisms that the Kinect contains and its workings in general.

Inside Kinect link to main article

Thursday 24 May 2012

Kinect cameras watch for autism - New Scientist

Diagnosing an autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in young children is tricky, but the earlier a child can begin speech therapy and get help learning social and communication skills, the better. Many different symptoms may suggest a child has an ASD, but they are subtle. It usually takes an experienced doctor to spot the signs by analysing video footage of the child playing - a costly and time-consuming process.

To find out if a computer can automate all or part of this process, Guillermo Sapiro, Nikolaos Papanikolopoulos and colleagues have fitted the nursery with five Kinect depth-sensing camera rigs to monitor groups of around 10 children aged between 3 and 5 years old as they play.

Click here for more information from original article

Sunday 13 May 2012

The Xbox Kinect in healthcare - a winning combination

Already a popular fitness tool, the Xbox Kinect is now being integrated into the healthcare industry and could modernise patient-doctor communications

Games consoles like the Nintendo Wii and Xbox Kinect have revolutionised at-home fitness, filtering into the exercise industry with their hugely popular workout games. Although they have proved a hit with tech-savvy consumers, there are hopes such technology could find a day-to-day use in the healthcare industry. Microsoft Research is one of the teams facilitating the integration of gaming technology into the healthcare industry and the Xbox Kinect is one of the main tools in its arsenal.

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Kinect Range of Motion Testing

This video demonstrates the potential of the Kinect camera to map and report range of movement. Initial thoughts are obviously that it is impressive, but I would be interested to see how well it picks up the main skeletal points of a patient with known movement limitations, contractures and/or physical deformities. Current experience would suggest to me that it would get confused and not be able to accurately identify all the necessary points to provide the range of movements that the video shows. The conclusion at this time would have to be that this has huge potential within musculoskeletal rehabilitation but has yet to prove itself or be demonstrated within areas such as neuro rehab. Time will tell but this video demonstrates impressive abilities and measurements of normal human movement.