A Virtual Patient Representation in the Medical Rehabilitation Domain

This paper proposes a virtual patient (VP) for the medical rehabilitation domain using the digital representation of the real life patient's matchstick skeleton. This virtual patient is used to analyze and track the recovery of the orthopedic patient with malicious posture problems. The creation of the digital patient was realized using a markerless depth camera, the Microsoft Kinect. The gathered data was saved in to a BVH type motion capture file. This file records not only the skeletal structure of the patient but its movements as well from witch the adduction, rotation and flexion angles of the joints can be analyzed. The data is stored in structured text format making it suitable to be used in telemedicine. The results confirm the utility and usability of the digital patient in clinical reasoning and in educational applications.