Vicon, a motion capture technology specialist for the life science, entertainment and engineering industries, has announced the launch of Nexus 2 – the newest version of its data capture software for Vicon’s life science customers.
The update addresses key speed, methodology and accuracy challenges faced by both clinical research environments and high-end biomechanics research for sports and rehabilitation.
The algorithms behind one of Nexus 2’s key features, Functional Calibration, were developed by a research team lead by Dr Markus Heller, now Professor of Biomechanics at the University of Southampton. More accurately pinpointing joint centre positions and joint axes orientations is vital for sports and rehabilitation gait analysis. Previously these essential variables of reference were estimated through the use of one single frame calibration. Functional Calibration within Nexus 2 allows multiple frames of dynamic movement trials to be analysed, enabling much improved tracking capabilities and much more accurate and reliable results.
The Nexus 2 Automatic Quality Assessment feature reduces the need for a manual check for inconsistencies such as gaps among thousands of pieces of data and frames by automatically recognising where there are gaps and what size they are. Nexus 2 then provides intelligent new methods to quickly fix the issues.
The new Auto Initialised Labelling feature can eliminate the need for manual labelling in most circumstances cutting processing time significantly. In addition, the Biomechanics Workflow feature allows a user to set up a series of steps - from data trial to process trial to movement trial. And the real-time Feedback Indicator allows the user to monitor subject calibration progress as the data is collected.
Direct integration with MATLAB and Python allows open source access to data collected by Nexus and enables huge flexibility improvements for users.
