Mobility of the neck using 3D motion capture system

[Juan Luis Garrido Castro]

Hello Biomch-L subscribers.

At the University of Cordoba (Spain), we are making a study to analyze the
mobility of the neck.

Our objective is to make a study on about 100 healthy people. The goal is to
demonstrate that our system has better precision, repeatability, etc. than
manual methods used at the present to analyze neck mobility (for example
goniometers).

We will use our own motion capture system: SOMCAM3D. It is an optical system
based on markers. Using several cameras we can obtain 3D positions of the
markers and several angles.

We are using projected angles of segments defined by markers attached to
head and shoulders. We think that if we use angles between reference systems
defined by shoulders / sternum and three markers on the head would produce
better results.

I want to ask you:

- Some references on studies similar to which we want to do.
- Normative data about range of movement of the neck.
- Methods to calculate inclination of the neck from three-dimensional
positions of certain markers.

Any suggestions would be very helpful.

Juan Luis Garrido

Dept. of Computing and Numerical Analysis
University of Cordoba