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A unique range of motion measurement systems and technologies to meet your research and education needs – whether outdoors or indoors, whether with markers or without, whether 2D or 3D, whether video or digital optical. By combining the digital optical strengths of Vicon with the proven flexibility of Peak, Vicon can offer the complete range of solutions.

HIGH ACCURACY - HIGH REPEATABILITY
Vicon offers the industry’s most accurate systems according to independent tests. Through Vicon’s innovation in unconstrained calibration, higher resolution sensors, improved optics and grayscale image processing, Vicon MX’s passive marker system is now regarded as more accurate than awkward, active marker solutions. The typical accuracy of a Vicon MX is in the 0.1mm range.

OPEN, FLEXIBLE ARCHITECTURE
As a researcher, you often need more than just a plug-and-play system. Though Vicon systems are easy to use, they also enable you to get to the heart of the raw data and the core system processing - so if you want to change something you can. For example, for biomechanical modeling and data manipulation and export, you can either use the tools and plug-ins supplied or you can write your own extensions using our APIs and SDKs (Software Development Kit). Every step of the way, Vicon makes sure the data is never hidden.

RESEARCH COMMUNITY
Vicon systems are in widespread use among biomechanical researchers worldwide, thus a community that exchanges ideas, experiences, models and source code has thrived for many years. The fact that Vicon is the largest supplier of optical motion measurement systems to universities, hospitals and other leading research institutions ensures that new members of the community will immediately benefit from a broad, existing knowledgebase.

QUALIFIED CUSTOMER SUPPORT
Vicon offer the industry’s leading customer support solution by employing support engineers with a wide variety of biomechanical backgrounds, including several PhDs. Thus, whenever you have a question that requires expert support, you can rely on the support engineers to get back to you with answers based on intimate knowledge of the science as well as the system.

ADVANCED MODELING TOOLS
Vicon offers several software solutions that make it easy to perform biomechanical analysis through customizable models and reports. This includes a fully integrated and validated full-body model (Plug-in Gait), an add-on Muscle Modeling Module (Polygon MMM) and the industry’s only scripting language specifically designed to make implementing biomechanical models easy – BodyBuilder’s BodyLanguage. However, you are not restricted to modeling exclusively in Vicon software. Using a standard plug-in (PECS) you can integrate models and scripts written in other applications such as MatLab, LabView or Microsoft Excel seamlessly into the main processing pipeline.

QUALITY PRESENTATIONS
So you have captured highly accurate measurement data, you have analyzed it in just the way you needed to, and now it comes to present the material – at a conference, to the patient, to the head of the research program – you need an application which enables you to integrate all the relevant data and analysis to build an attractive presentation. For this there’s Polygon – an application specifically designed to integrate 3D motion measurement data, biomechanical modeling results, digital video, force plate, EMG and other multimedia content. Using intuitive hyperlinks to guide the reader through a report, the author can present research results either as a slide-based presentation or as an interactive report which can be freely distributed with a freeware report viewer.

Research Scenario

No two pieces of research are quite the same, but to give you an idea of how easy and how useful Vicon systems are as research tools, this section describes a typical scenario when using a system for research purposes.

1. Design the experiment
Vicon software allows the researcher full flexibility to design the experiment without having to worry about limitations in the system’s capabilities:

• The availability of fully flexible biomechanical modeling solutions – either using BodyLanguage or a script written in a third-party package such as MatLab – means that any type of mathematical modeling may be done, from simple models based on vector algebra to advanced models using optimization techniques.

• The use of passive markers means full flexibility in marker sizes (down to 1mm in diameter) and placement – and even the possibility of not using markers at all in Vicon's video-based system. Thus, the person, animal or object being measured will be able to move freely, without any cumbersome wires or big, active markers – which again means the researcher will not have to take any system-imposed variables into consideration.

• The system has been designed to allow full flexibility in setting up the measurement volume – the same system can be used to measure both a detailed study of the hand and a full-body experiment requiring lots of space to move. In addition, the cameras can record the data using any frequency between 1 and 2000 fps.

2. Conduct the measurements
Having designed the experiment, it’s time to do it. Realizing that researchers often need to take repetitive measurements for multiple subjects to get statistically valid data, care has been taken to make sure that the workflow is as smooth as possible – requiring a minimum of operator intervention. It achieves this by offering a number of key software features.

• An automated, yet customizable pipeline that runs automatically after each measurement has concluded. The researcher can choose between a variety of built-in operations, including filters, biomechanical models and data export, or even run customized processes written using MatLab, LabView, Excel, C++ or Visual Basic.

• Immediate 3D feedback in real time giving the researcher an assessment of data quality as well as biomechanical results, such as joint angles.

• The ability to post-process the measurements using batch processing. If, for example, the biomechanical model needs some tweaking after the measurements have been done, the ability to select them all and batch process with one mouse click is a great time (and frustration) saver.

3. Analyze the results
The typical final step is to analyze the results and write a report containing the conclusions of the experiment. You may wish to use third-party application for either task – for example, a statistical package to analyze and then Microsoft Word or LaTex to write a scientific paper – or, perhaps, PowerPoint to present the results at a conference or to students attending a lecture. The Vicon software gives you full export flexibility:

• Data can be automatically exported straight to third-party applications (without using data files) from the processing pipeline. Alternatively, you can export the data in ASCII format data files.

• Data can be saved in the open, industry-standard C3D file format and read into third-party applications without modification or pre-processing.

• Data can be prepared in graphs or as a 3D model using the reporting software, Polygon, and then exported as graphical objects or bitmaps.

• A full report including texts, graphs and 3D models can be prepared in Polygon and exported to Microsoft Word for further refinement or printing.

• A full report, including all the interactive multimedia features can be bundled up with a freeware Polygon viewer and distributed to anybody using a Windows-based PC - or presented at a conference using Polygon's built-in slide presentation interface.

Relevant Products

VICON MX
MX Giganet . The heart of the most advanced, most accurate digital optical Vicon system to date, the MX Giganet is the central system unit, coordinating the operation of up to 244 cameras in a single system and an unlimited number by combining two or more systems. As well as enabling you to connect up to 244 cameras it can also synchronize data from force plates, EMG, foot switches and other 3rd party measurement devices.

MX Cameras. There are four MX cameras available: MX-T160, MX-T40,MX-T20 and MX-3+. The camera number corresponds to its resolution - the MX-3+ has 0.3 million pixels, the T20 has 2 million, theT40 has 4 million pixels and the T160 has no less than 16 megapixels.  Regardless of the resolution, they all capture the marker images using grayscale technology, ensuring maximum accuracy. The cameras also have on-board processing that calculates marker centers - or, if you choose, all the gray-scale marker images can be sent to the processing PC.

Vicon Nexus . Easy to use, single click capture application, used to drive the Vicon MX hardware. It includes Vicon MX’s integrated data management system, Eclipse. Supported by all the MX applications, Eclipse enables the user to easily locate, access and manipulate all the data files associated with an experiment or trial – all the 3D data, force plate data, patient notes and so on. Everything under one management structure, so you don’t have to spend time looking for it.

Vicon BodyBuilder. Flexible kinematic and kinetic modeling tool enabling the creation of completely custom models through its built-in, optimized scripting system, BodyLanguage

Plug-in Modeler. Plugs into MX Workstation to enable you to automatically process captured data through any custom model created in BodyBuilder.

OLGA. Innovative technique to calculate joint centers and segment orientations more accurately and consistently by optimizing measured movement across the entire trial.

External System Plug-ins. A wide variety of plug-ins is available for Vicon, including data exporters for LifeModeler and SIMM.

DV Video. Simply and inexpensively capture digital video (DV) movies synchronized with Vicon MX 3D data, all set up and controlled through MX Workstation capture software.

PECS. Specifically designed for researchers who wish to incorporate their own export or processing algorithms into the automated workflow, the PECS plug-in allows full read/write access to the gait data from third-party applications, such as MatLab and Microsoft Excel.

Vicon Polygon with Plug-in Gait. All the interactivity and excitement of multimedia reporting in Polygon, combined with all the reliability and provability of using the world’s most established, most verified protocol for Clinical Gait Analysis in Plug-in Gait.

VICON MOTUS
Vicon Motus 2D Standard Video System. Enables movement tracking and analysis in two dimensions using a digital camcorder and PC or laptop.

Vicon Motus 2D Optical Capture System. Effortlessly collect primary angles, displacements and speeds of single plane motion by placing contrasting markers over joint centers and connecting a video camera to a computer.

Vicon Motus 3D Field Collection System. A practical system to acquire 3D coordinate data with standard digital camcorders, without any need to take computers out into the field.

Vicon Motus 2D or 3D High Speed Tracking Systems. Track high speed or intricate movement in 2D and 3D with high-speed video cameras operating up to 10,000 frames per second.