The Challenge
A team at the Universite du Quebec a Montreal under Dr Christian Duval and Patrick Boissy Ph.D are working on a project researching the mobility of elderly patients with Parkinson’s disease. The study will provide ground-breaking research results in a number of ways but the key challenge the team face is studying patients’ motion in their homes, for up to 4 hours at a time outside of lab environments.

“We needed to use capture equipment that was as comfortable and unobtrusive to the subject as possible. One of the biggest challenges was to move the studies out of the lab into natural and familiar environments. Using Animazoo’s wireless systems will allow participants to roam freely in their homes during the study sessions”. Dr. Christian Duval

The Solution
In this environment, the current systems used by the research team (including Vicon, Ascension and Northern Digital Systems) weren’t able to cope. They also own an inertial motion capture system from Xsens / Moven but in tests this was not able to provide the accuracy, reliability and environmental flexibility required for the study. The only system they found to meet their needs was Animazoo’s IGS-180 inertial motion capture system.

New magnetic compensation algorithms in Animazoo’s IGS-180 software proved better than expected and by using Animazoo’s SDK, the UQAM team were able to plan all data gathering exactly as they need it and use it in their own analysis pipelines.

“We tested a variety of IMU motion capture systems and were well aware that every system has pros and cons, but Animazoo knew how to deal with and overcome any issues we identified. Aside from the data accuracy, one of the most attractive features of the IGS-180 was its adaptability in the field, and Animazoo understood how to get the system to meet our needs. Animazoo’s efforts to modify the system to fulfill our requirements helped to take the project from a potentially feasible study towards a robust research project”,. Dr. Christian Duval

“Animazoo’s attention to details and understanding of IMU-based biomechanics motion capture issues, coupled with their software environment, SDK and willingness to work with us to achieve our goals were deciding factors in our choice of their product for our project.”- Patrick Boissy, Ph.D.