Real-time Tracking of Handheld Object from Color or Depth Images

Object tracking during rehabilitation could help a therapist to evaluate a patient's movement and progress. Hence, we present an image-based method for real-time tracking of handheld objects due to its ease of use and availability of color or depth cameras. We use an efficient projective point correspondence method and generalize the use of precomputed spare viewpoint information to allow real-time tracking of a rigid object. The method runs at more than 30 fps on a CPU while achieving submillimeter accuracy on synthetic datasets and robust tracking on a semi-synthetic dataset.Clinical relevance Real-time, accurate, and robust tracking of an object using an image-based method is a promising tool for rehabilitation applications as it is practical for clinical settings.