The Pac-12 has funded a research project that could help teams evaluate a low-cost motion capture technology option used to assess the injury risk and readiness of rehabilitating college athletes in their return to action.
The University of Washington in studying injury prevention will focus on evaluating Microsoft Kinect’s simple motion capture technology as a viable option to measure abnormal joint movements and help facilitate safe return to sports at a lower cost than standard systems such as Vicon.
The study will compare the functional movement data in healthy volunteers using Kinect and Vicon to see if the low-cost option can be used to determine when student-athletes can return from injury or surgery.
The project is part of the Pac-12’s Student-Athlete Health and Well-Being Grant Program, and commissioner Larry Scott told reporters Wednesday that student-athlete health has become an important area in which the conference collaborates closely with member universities, their researchers and their medical schools. He noted the many media reports on the growing awareness of head trauma and other injuries in sports.
The Pac-12 is investing $2.1 million in funding for the motion capture technology research project along with two other projects related to traumatic brain injury and stress fractures. The projects were selected by doctors, athletic trainers, and research experts from all twelve Pac-12 institutions.
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“It’s something we’ve committed ourselves to as a conference, to engage in and to leverage the expertise of Pac-12 researchers, medical schools, the outstanding doctors and trainers we have,” Scott said of the brain trauma issue. “We’re going to leverage our expertise to contribute to the research in this area.
“Obviously, there are a lot of efforts going on throughout the country, but we made a determination a few years ago that the Pac-12 has an ability to really be a leader in this space, and we’ve committed ourselves to work on it.”
Also, the University of Oregon will analyze a group of runners’ biomechanical information over a three-year period to see which patterns are associated with the development of stress fractures. Information from foot motion patterns, foot-to-ground contact patterns and accelerations can be integrated with known risk factors such as nutrition and training volume/intensity to predict runners who are at a higher risk of stress fractures.
“Building on early results from current Pac-12 studies, we are excited to add these recently approved projects to the research program and we expect that the program will continue to provide significant and valuable insights into improving the health and well-being of all Pac-12 student-athletes,” Dan Nordquist, the Associate Vice President for the Office of Research Support and Operations unit at Washington State University and the chair of the Pac-12’s Research Grant Program Committee, said in a statement.