Use of Digital Photogrammetry in 3D Motion Analysis and Biomechanics of Sports

Abstract

Scientifically recording a movement and giving feedback by evaluating it is an indispensable element of the sports and sports education. In sports, making the movement analysis outside the laboratory environment would allow us to minimize the adverse effects, such as restrictions and unobservability of the movements due to nature of the sports. Today, monitoring of athletes' movements using video recorder systems and analyzing them by photogrammetric methods overlap different disciplines in terms of study area and reveal quite successful results in many applications. The photogrammetric techniques are based on the measurement and interpretation of the objects from images. The camera parameters are mathematically determined using the camera calibration or the values specified by the camera-manufacturing companies. Then the analytical relationship between the image coordinates and the three-dimensional space coordinates is modelled and the conversion process is performed. This allows to model objects without making physical contact and, thus, to obtain their metric information.
Nowadays, the three-dimensional and real-time display of a movement of the athletes is getting more important. This review aims to examine identification of athlete movements through photogrammetric methods in the light of previously conducted researches. Depending on the information obtained from these studies, a system that allows for a real-time analysis of the athletes' movements is designed.