Plantar pressure-based gestures for medical image manipulation

Abstract

In this work, we present an interaction concept for manipulating an image viewer only using a pressure sensitive shoe insole. A simple foot gesture set has been created and applied to a prototypical user interface, which enables the changing of slices of medical image data in an image viewer. In a pilot study, the gestures were tested according to the NASA Task Load Index (NASA-TLX). The purpose of this project was to estimate how suitable and user-friendly different foot gestures are in practice. We found that plantar pressure-based gestures are quite intuitive and users quickly become accustomed to using them. However, gestures based on overlapping pressure-sensitive areas might lead to unintended results.