The Reliability and Validity of Wearable Inertial Sensors Coupled with the Microsoft Kinect to Measure Shoulder Range-of-Motion.
BACKGROUND
Objective assessment of shoulder joint active range of motion (AROM) is critical to monitor patient progress after conservative or surgical intervention. Advancements in miniature devices have led researchers to validate inertial sensors to capture human movement. This study investigated the construct validity as well as intra- and inter-rater reliability of active shoulder mobility measurements using a coupled system of inertial sensors and the Microsoft Kinect (HumanTrak).


METHODS
50 healthy participants with no history of shoulder pathology were tested bilaterally for fixed and free ROM: (1) shoulder flexion, and (2) abduction using HumanTrak and goniometry. The repeat testing of the standardised protocol was completed after seven days by two physiotherapists.


RESULTS
All HumanTrak shoulder movements demonstrated adequate reliability (intra-class correlation (ICC) ≥ 0.70). HumanTrak demonstrated higher intra-rater reliability (ICCs: 0.93 and 0.85) than goniometry (ICCs: 0.75 and 0.53) for measuring free shoulder flexion and abduction AROM, respectively. Similarly, HumanTrak demonstrated higher intra-rater reliability (ICCs: 0.81 and 0.94) than goniometry (ICCs: 0.70 and 0.93) for fixed flexion and abduction AROM, respectively. Construct validity between HumanTrak and goniometry was adequate except for free abduction. The differences between raters were predominately acceptable and below ±10°.


CONCLUSIONS
These results indicated that the HumanTrak system is an objective, valid and reliable way to assess and track shoulder ROM.
['Beshara|Peter|P|0000-0002-5600-7178', 'Chen|Judy F|JF|', 'Read|Andrew C|AC|', 'Lagadec|Pierre|P|', 'Wang|Tian|T|', 'Walsh|William Robert|WR|0000-0002-5023-6148']
D001696:Biomechanical Phenomena D006801:Humans D016059:Range of Motion, Articular D015203:Reproducibility of Results D012782:Shoulder D000076251:Wearable Electronic Devices
sensor Kinect measurement shoulder range of motion goniometry