Development of a game-based system to support stroke rehabilitation using kinect device

A game-based system to support stroke rehabilitation is developed in this paper. The goal is to make the rehabilitation process more accessible and enjoyable to the patients. The system consists of 3 modules, including the Device Module (DM), the Game Module (GM), and the Data Collection Module (DCM). The DM communicates with the Microsoft´s Kinect device to receive the skeleton data of the patients and send it to the GM for the game processing. The jigsaw puzzle is implemented as a color matching game to simplify the gaming process and can support a wide range of patients. Hand and upper limb movement is required to grasp and move the jigsaw pieces to the right place. The trajectories of hand, elbow, and shoulder that are collected by the DCM can be used to assess the patient´s progress. The system has been tested with a real patient. He can play the developed game after a learning period. The result shows that the body balance capability of the patient is implicitly required by the system to maintain motion tracking of the Kinect device.