Dance2Rehab3D A 3D Virtual Rehabilitation Game Alessandro Diogo Brückheimer, Marcelo da Silva Hounsell LAboratory for Research on Visual Applications - LARVA. Universidade do Estado de Santa Catarina - UDESC. Joinville, Brazil alebruck@gmail.com, marcelo@joinville.udesc.br Antônio Vinícius Soares Núcleo de Pesquisas em Neuroreabilitação – NUPEN. Associação Catarinense de Ensino - ACE. Joinville, Brazil a.vini@ig.com.br Abstract—Keeping patients into long term therapy seem to be as beneficial as the therapy itself. The use of computers to achieve engagement and motivation has been sought as a medium that not only give entertainment but real therapy benefits. The use of some interaction devices (such as mouse) however is a limiting feature to some patients with motor disabilities. Existing camera-based games do not reason with the whole spectrum of movements required by therapy. Recent development and popularization of depth cameras made it possible to develop interfaces that can explore users’ 3D movements with no device to hold. This paper presents a game- like virtual environment where controllable situations are generated and users limitations are considered in order to foster movements on an interesting and relaxed set of activities. The development has shown that a close collaboration between physiotherapists and computer scientists are mandatory in order to achieve a useful application. Keywords-Virtual Reality; Rehabilitation; Games; Depth Camera I. INTRODUCTION Motor rehabilitation can be defined as a way to achieve qualitative and quantitative improvements in the daily activities, bringing functional independence to the subject [1]. Rehabilitation can use Virtual Reality (vr) techniques and technologies as a way to promote computational means [op. cit.]. The acronym VR can also be interpreted as Virtual Rehabilitation when used to supply motor rehabilitation applications [2]. Virtual Rehabilitation (VR) provides, among other benefits, the ability to motivate patients to physical therapy because it allows the establishment of a context for carrying out the activity that goes beyond the treatment. In the conventional physical therapy, the patient must perform a sequence of repetitive, usually boring, set of activities. Through computer systems, it is possible to use a game-like software, for instance, where the patient must perform the same movements made in physical therapy but through a much more entertaining interface. Despite presenting a number of benefits, the correct use of the computational devices to the motor rehabilitation needs software reliability and interaction accuracy with the patient. Because the applications involve patients and induce them to perform movements, they should provide an appropriate level of movements to minimize the patients´ risk that may occur by over stressing their joints. Games developed to specific activities, beyond the entertainment level, are called Serious Games [3]. Serious Games may have different goals, as the daily situation simulation [4] or hostile combat environments simulator [5]. Serious Games are used in the health sector for simulation instruction and drills training [6], allowing new approaches of treatment to be experienced. Games that make use of cameras (webcams) have gained great prominence, as they provide more intuitive interaction and enable patients to produce the necessary movements for their treatment during the game session. Motor rehabilitation is one of the areas that benefits from the new movement interaction techniques because it allows the activities of a physical therapy to have a goal where the repetitive movements are necessary which produces complete therapeutic benefits. Beyond that, any resource used to motivate patients is considered valid in order to keep patients enrolled in the therapy as the benefits due to the rehabilitation procedure itself and the amount of sessions are equally important. Nevertheless, cheap webcams can only reason with 2D information of the patient´s silhouette which can be a limiting feature as the majority of pathologies affect upper limbs abilities to perform in the 3D space. Recent technology evolution made available and affordable a new kind of cameras, the depth cameras. These cameras not only capture images but also distances from the camera. There are not many games using depth camera around that are tailored to therapy use although one can use existing games for that task. However, in doing so, only the entertainment issues are tackled and the therapy ones are mostly set aside. Further, as existing games were developed for healthy users, they can be considered too fast, too long and/or would require users to reach too far. Because of this, existing games hold up patients at initial phases of the game and therefore end up frustrating patients. 2012 14th Symposium on Virtual and Augmented Reality 978-0-7695-4725-1/25 $26.00 © 4725 IEEE DOI 10.1109/SVR.2012.30 182 2012 14th Symposium on Virtual and Augmented Reality 978-0-7695-4725-1/25 $26.00 © 4725 IEEE DOI 10.1109/SVR.2012.30 182