Investigation of a low cost method to quantify cosmetic defect

For many patients, the motivation in seeking treatment is the improvement of their appearance rather than to correct an underlying skeletal deformity, so cosmetic concerns and the psychosocial impacts of adolescent idiopathic scoliosis are important factors in the clinical decision-making process. In the current environment of evidence based medicine there is a growing need to quantify back surface shape and general body asymmetry with the objective of producing an agreed scoring to be used in developing treatment plans and assessing outcomes but to date many clinics continue to rely on qualitative or expensive methods to describe cosmetic deformity. In November 2010, Microsoft® Corporation launched the low cost Kinect™ camera with 18 million units sold (as at January 2012) throughout the world. The device incorporates proprietary light coding technology that reconstructs the three dimensional location of an estimated 50,000 projected points illuminating objects within its field of view in approximately 1/30th of a second. The aim of the research was to investigate the capabilities of a low cost, reliable and inherently safe apparatus based on Kinect depth sensing and video technology to simultaneously acquire back surface shape and the locations of bony landmarks with the goal of providing data to describe cosmetic defect. Work has been completed using both the apparatus and a commercially available optical motion capture system (Vicon Motion Systems, Oxford, U.K.) to acquire data from a test object representing an unaffected human torso. Results were obtained to compare tri-dimensional bony landmark reconstruction accuracy and combined with analyses of point cloud data to describe back shape. Early indications are that the proposed apparatus has potential to be a clinically useful tool.