A Mapping Review of Real-Time Movement Sonification Systems for Movement Rehabilitation

Movement sonification is emerging as a useful tool for rehabilitation, with increasing evidence in support of its use. To create such a system requires component considerations outside of typical sonification design choices, such as the dimension of movement to sonify, section of anatomy to track, and methodology of motion capture. This review takes this emerging and highly diverse area of literature and keyword-code existing real-time movement sonification systems, to analyze and highlight current trends in these design choices, as such providing an overview of existing systems. A combination of snowballing through relevant existing reviews and a systematic search of multiple databases were utilized to obtain a list of projects for data extraction. The review categorizes systems into three sections: identifying the link between physical dimension to auditory dimension used in sonification, identifying the target anatomy tracked, identifying the movement tracking system used to monitor the target anatomy. The review proceeds to analyze the systematic mapping of the literature and provide results of the data analysis highlighting common and innovative design choices used, irrespective of application, before discussing the findings in the context of movement rehabilitation. A database containing the mapped keywords assigned to each project are submitted with this review.

Automated summary

Movement sonification is a valuable tool for rehabilitation and its use is supported by increasing evidence. However, creating such a system requires consideration of unique design choices, such as the dimension of movement to sonify, the section of anatomy to track, and the methodology of motion capture. This review analyzes existing real-time movement sonification systems to identify common design choices and trends, providing an overview of the field.