Patient–Therapist Cooperative Hand Telerehabilitation through a Novel Framework Involving the Virtual Glove System

Abstract

Telerehabilitation is important for post-stroke or post-surgery rehabilitation because the tasks it uses are reproducible. When combined with assistive technologies, such as robots, virtual reality, tracking systems, or a combination of them, it can also allow the recording of a patient’s progression and rehabilitation monitoring, along with an objective evaluation. In this paper, we present the structure, from actors and functionalities to software and hardware views, of a novel framework that allows cooperation between patients and therapists. The system uses a computer-vision-based system named virtual glove for real-time hand tracking (40 fps), which is translated into a light and precise system. The novelty of this work lies in the fact that it gives the therapist quantitative, not only qualitative, information about the hand’s mobility, for every hand joint separately, while at the same time providing control of the result of the rehabilitation by also quantitatively monitoring the progress of the hand mobility. Finally, it also offers a strategy for patient–therapist interaction and therapist–therapist data sharing.