Depth data based determination of gait parameters of subjects after stroke for the use in clinical gait rehabilitation

Because of the demographic development, the amount of stroke patients of now approx. 250 000 incidents only in Germany will further increase. This leads to an immense future burden on the health systems. Therefore the rehabilitaton therapy has to become as effective as possible to reduce costs. An approach to achieve this is the continuous patient-adaptive gait therapy, in which the therapy progress is measured and provided to the therapists to adjust the therapy accordingly. Currently available systems have disadvantages that permit pratical clinical everyday use for stroke patients. Therefore, systems must be developed which reliably measure gait quality and meet the requirements to be widely applicable in clinical environment. In this work a system is presented that provides a measure for gait quality through joint angle trajectories and that aims to meet the requirements for wide clinical applicability. The system. s performance is demonstrated for use at a gait therapy robot. As sensory basis a Time of Flight (TOF) camera is chosen. 'Fraunhofer/TU Berlin research group rehabilitation robotics'.