Computer Vision Based on a Modular Neural Network for Automatic Assessment of Physical Therapy Rehabilitation Activities

Physical rehabilitation techniques during the treatment of clinical pathology are one of the most challenging areas for the medical structure, patients, and families. In large and continental countries, remote monitoring of this treatment is essential. However, equipment and medical follow-up during exercises still have high costs. With the improvement of computer vision and machine learning techniques, some computational, less expensive alternatives have been proposed in the literature. However, monitoring patients during physical rehabilitation exercises with the help of artificial intelligence by a health professional, especially from the capture of visual signals, is still a challenge and poorly explored in the scientific-technological literature. This work aims to propose a new methodology based on computer vision and machine learning for remote tracking of the body joints of patients during physiotherapy rehabilitation exercises. As a new contribution, this work presents a modular neural network architecture composed of two modules: one for detecting physical exercises and another for measuring how much is correct. Another contribution is a strategy for expanding databases, considering that generic databases for this type of exercise are rare on the internet. The results showed that both modules obtained more than 90% of accuracy in recognition and their respective validation.