Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2020 May 27:2:50.
doi: 10.3389/fspor.2020.00050. eCollection 2020.

Evaluation of 3D Markerless Motion Capture Accuracy Using OpenPose With Multiple Video Cameras

Affiliations

Evaluation of 3D Markerless Motion Capture Accuracy Using OpenPose With Multiple Video Cameras

Nobuyasu Nakano et al. Front Sports Act Living. .

Abstract

There is a need within human movement sciences for a markerless motion capture system, which is easy to use and sufficiently accurate to evaluate motor performance. This study aims to develop a 3D markerless motion capture technique, using OpenPose with multiple synchronized video cameras, and examine its accuracy in comparison with optical marker-based motion capture. Participants performed three motor tasks (walking, countermovement jumping, and ball throwing), and these movements measured using both marker-based optical motion capture and OpenPose-based markerless motion capture. The differences in corresponding joint positions, estimated from the two different methods throughout the analysis, were presented as a mean absolute error (MAE). The results demonstrated that, qualitatively, 3D pose estimation using markerless motion capture could correctly reproduce the movements of participants. Quantitatively, of all the mean absolute errors calculated, approximately 47% were <20 mm, and 80% were <30 mm. However, 10% were >40 mm. The primary reason for mean absolute errors exceeding 40 mm was that OpenPose failed to track the participant's pose in 2D images owing to failures, such as recognition of an object as a human body segment or replacing one segment with another depending on the image of each frame. In conclusion, this study demonstrates that, if an algorithm that corrects all apparently wrong tracking can be incorporated into the system, OpenPose-based markerless motion capture can be used for human movement science with an accuracy of 30 mm or less.

Keywords: biomechanics; human movement; markerless; motion capture; openPose.

PubMed Disclaimer

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Experimental setup and overview of the markerless motion capture.
Figure 2
Figure 2
(A) Examples of participant's pose estimated by the marker-based motion capture (Mocap) and by the OpenPose-based markerless motion capture (OpenPose); (B) Examples of 2D pose tracking success and failure during a (1) ball throwing task and (2) walking task. We defined the apparently incorrect position tracking as failures and defined the others as success based on our visual inspection.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Time series profiles of joint positions estimated by the marker-based motion capture (Mocap) and by the markerless motion capture using OpenPose (OpenPose). Here, the X, Y, and Z positions of (A) the ankle joint for throwing under the 1K condition, (B) the knee joint for jumping under the 1K condition, (C) the elbow joint for throwing under the 1K condition, and (D) the ankle joint for walking under the 4K condition are shown as representative plots. The mean absolute error (MAE) through analysis duration is shown in each panel. Also, 1K and 4K represent that the task was recorded under 1K (1, 920 × 1, 080 pixels at 120 Hz) and 4K (3, 840 × 2, 160 pixels at 30 Hz) conditions when using video-camera-based motion capture, respectively. X is lateral/medial, Y is anterior/posterior, and Z is inferior/superior direction.

References

    1. Cao Z., Hidalgo G., Simon T., Wei S. E., Sheikh Y. (2018). Openpose: realtime multi-person 2D pose estimation using part affinity fields. arXiv preprint arXiv:1812.08008. 10.1109/CVPR.2017.143 - DOI - PubMed
    1. Chen C. H., Ramanan D. (2017). “3D human pose estimation= 2D pose estimation+ matching,” in Proceedings of the IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (Honolulu, HI: ), 7035–7043. 10.1109/CVPR.2017.610 - DOI
    1. Clark R. A., Pua Y. H., Fortin K., Ritchie C., Webster K. E., Denehy L., et al. . (2012). Validity of the Microsoft Kinect for assessment of postural control. Gait Posture 36, 372–377. 10.1016/j.gaitpost.2012.03.033 - DOI - PubMed
    1. CMU-Perceptual-Computing-Lab (2017). OpenPose: Real-Time Multi-Person Keypoint Detection Library for Body, Face, Hands, and Foot Estimation. Available online at: https://github.com/CMU-Perceptual-Computing-Lab/openpose - PubMed
    1. Gao Z., Yu Y., Zhou Y., Du S. (2015). Leveraging two kinect sensors for accurate full-body motion capture. Sensors 15, 24297–24317. 10.3390/s150924297 - DOI - PMC - PubMed

LinkOut - more resources