Body markers detection based on 3D video processing oriented to children gait analysis

This paper describes preliminary results of an auxiliary system designed to obtain a standard of gait kinematic of children in the age of 6 to 12 years of a specific population. It is expected that the use of the system may help children from vulnerable social groups with disabilities due to accidents or illness. The system is based on the Microsoft Kinect 3D sensor. Corporal segments and markers are determined by extracting the body silhouette using a background subtraction technique and morphologic operations on the depth plane. Results obtained with the proposed system proved that the system is able to estimate the main corporal markers needed in gait analysis. The estimations showed good correlation compared with a manual ground truth. The maximum relative angle average deviation found was 1.63° indicating acceptable mark tracking.