TY - JOUR

T1 - A tangible solution for hand motion tracking in clinical applications

AU - Salchow-Hömmen, Christina

AU - Callies, Leonie

AU - Laidig, Daniel

AU - Valtin, Markus

AU - Schauer, Thomas

AU - Seel, Thomas

N1 - Funding Information: The presented work was partly conducted within the research project BeMobil, supported by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (FKZ16SV7069K). We acknowledge support by the German Research Foundation and the Open Access Publication Funds of Technische Universität Berlin.

PY - 2019/1/1

Y1 - 2019/1/1

N2 - Objective real-time assessment of hand motion is crucial in many clinical applications including technically-assisted physical rehabilitation of the upper extremity. We propose an inertial-sensor-based hand motion tracking system and a set of dual-quaternion-based methods for estimation of finger segment orientations and fingertip positions. The proposed system addresses the specific requirements of clinical applications in two ways: (1) In contrast to glove-based approaches, the proposed solution maintains the sense of touch. (2) In contrast to previous work, the proposed methods avoid the use of complex calibration procedures, which means that they are suitable for patients with severe motor impairment of the hand. To overcome the limited significance of validation in lab environments with homogeneous magnetic fields, we validate the proposed system using functional hand motions in the presence of severe magnetic disturbances as they appear in realistic clinical settings. We show that standard sensor fusion methods that rely on magnetometer readings may perform well in perfect laboratory environments but can lead to more than 15 cm root-mean-square error for the fingertip distances in realistic environments, while our advanced method yields root-mean-square errors below 2 cm for all performed motions.

AB - Objective real-time assessment of hand motion is crucial in many clinical applications including technically-assisted physical rehabilitation of the upper extremity. We propose an inertial-sensor-based hand motion tracking system and a set of dual-quaternion-based methods for estimation of finger segment orientations and fingertip positions. The proposed system addresses the specific requirements of clinical applications in two ways: (1) In contrast to glove-based approaches, the proposed solution maintains the sense of touch. (2) In contrast to previous work, the proposed methods avoid the use of complex calibration procedures, which means that they are suitable for patients with severe motor impairment of the hand. To overcome the limited significance of validation in lab environments with homogeneous magnetic fields, we validate the proposed system using functional hand motions in the presence of severe magnetic disturbances as they appear in realistic clinical settings. We show that standard sensor fusion methods that rely on magnetometer readings may perform well in perfect laboratory environments but can lead to more than 15 cm root-mean-square error for the fingertip distances in realistic environments, while our advanced method yields root-mean-square errors below 2 cm for all performed motions.

KW - Dual quaternions

KW - Functional electrical stimulation

KW - Hand and finger kinematics

KW - Hand tracking

KW - Inertial measurement unit

KW - Inertial sensor

KW - Magnetic disturbances

KW - Real-time motion tracking

KW - Rehabilitation

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85059798401&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.3390/s19010208

DO - 10.3390/s19010208

M3 - Article

C2 - 30626130

AN - SCOPUS:85059798401

VL - 19

JO - Sensors (Switzerland)

JF - Sensors (Switzerland)

SN - 1424-8220

IS - 1

M1 - 208

ER -