PiP Virtual Rehabilitation System

Traditional rehabilitation in the United States has been ineffective mainly due to the lack of patients fulfilling their program requirements. The PiP Virtual Rehabilitation System offers patients an engaging and customizable rehabilitation program. The PiP system is able to quantify improvement in balance by using the Nintendo Wii Balance Board (WBB) to measure the patient´s center of pressure (CoP). Microsoft´s Kinect for Windows (KW) is used in conjunction with the WBB to render a virtual environment for patient engagement. While the patient performs tasks in the virtual setting, their progress is monitored and displayed for the user via a graphical user interface (GUI). The anterior/posterior (A/P) maximum excursion range is calculated by identifying the largest range on the y-axis between the plotted CoP positional data. Similarly, the medial/lateral (M/L) maximum excursion range is calculated using the x-axis. Plots depicting a decrease in maximum excursion values in either the A/P or M/L directions are indicative of an improvement in balance. The PiP system is an improvement on prior rehabilitation systems.