Athletic Movement Performance (AMP) Lab, directed by Dr. Yuki A. Sugimoto in the Department of Physical Therapy and Human Movement Sciences (PTHMS) at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine, is advancing ACL-injury and chronic ankle instability (CAI) research by integrating Theia3D markerless motion capture to analyze high-risk movements – including jumping, landing, sprinting, and cutting – in adolescent and collegiate athletes. With Theia3D, the AMP Lab has streamlined key components of real-world biomechanics data collection, completing sessions approximately one-third faster than before. This increased efficiency allows the team to evaluate more athletes, run more trials, and accelerate investigations into lower-limb injury mechanisms that directly inform sport-performance and sports-medicine decision-making.

A 2025 Sensors review from Auburn University compares how optical, IMU, and markerless motion capture systems perform across real-world sports environments. The findings reveal that while optical systems remain industry standard, markerless motion capture is quickly closing the gap, offering unmatched scalability, flexibility, and ecological validity for multi-sport organizations.

A July 2025 study published in the Journal of Sports Sciences evaluated the reliability of Theia3D’s markerless motion capture system for assessing lower-limb and trunk kinematics during sprint running. Researchers compared Theia3D against a marker-based optical reference system (Motion Analysis Corp. Raptor) across multiple sprint phases, including early acceleration, mid-acceleration, and top speed. Results showed good to excellent agreement between systems for most joints and movement phases, with some variability at top speed, particularly in pelvic and foot angles. The findings highlight both the promise and the challenges of measuring sprint mechanics with markerless motion capture in high-speed, real-world conditions.