ISO/TS 23541-2:2025

Health informatics — Categorial structure for representation of 3D human body position system — Part 2: Body movement

This document provides terminological concepts for the representation of human body movement and establishes the categories and relationships of text-based terminology and time-dependent body movement in 3D data. This document does not cover 3D graphic user interface, data structure, implementation and guidelines.

Informatique de santé — Structure catégorielle pour la représentation du système de positionnement du corps humain en 3D — Partie 2: Mouvement du corps

General Information

• Status: Published
• Publication Date: 02-Mar-2025
• ICS: 35.240.80 - IT applications in health care technology
• Technical Committee: ISO/TC 215 - Health informatics
• Drafting Committee: ISO/TC 215 - Health informatics
• Current Stage: 6060 - International Standard published
• Start Date: 03-Mar-2025
• Due Date: 01-Oct-2024
• Completion Date: 03-Mar-2025

Overview

ISO/TS 23541-2:2025 – "Health informatics - Categorial structure for representation of 3D human body position system - Part 2: Body movement" – provides a foundation for the representation and coordination of human body movement terminology and 3D body movement data within health informatics. This technical specification defines key terminological concepts, categories, and the relationships required to align time-dependent 3D body movements with conventional text-based healthcare terminology.

By establishing a categorial structure for body movement, the standard advances interoperability and semantic consistency between creators and users of medical 3D animations. It enables more accurate documentation, communication, and quantitative analysis of human movement in healthcare, particularly for clinical assessment, patient education, and health research.

Key Topics

• Terminological Framework: Defines key concepts such as 3D body movement, 3D animation, anatomical site, action, intervention, observation, and finding.
• Categorial Structure: Outlines the semantic categories central to describing dynamic body movements, including:
  • 3D body part, 3D body site, and 3D object
  • 3D actor and 3D annotation models
  • Action, action segment, and timeline
• Semantic Links: Identifies and formalizes relationships between terminological concepts and 3D data using links such as:
  • hasDescription: Connects an action to its text-based description
  • hasAnnotation: Relates action segments to explanatory 3D annotations
  • hasModel: Binds text-based descriptions to 3D actor models
  • hasAction: Associates a 3D body or actor with specific movement actions
  • hasActor: Links 3D models to the performances of body movement
  • hasObservation: Connects action segments to measurable clinical observations
  • hasFinding: Relates movement segments to clinical assessments
  • hasIntervention: Connects segments to healthcare interventions
  • hasSegment: Segments actions over a timeline for finer granularity
• Scope and Exclusions: Focuses on the conceptual and categorial aspects and does not address graphical user interfaces, specific data structures, or implementation details for 3D systems.

Applications

ISO/TS 23541-2:2025 enhances the precision and standardization of medical information in a variety of applications:

• Clinical Documentation: Enables detailed, terminologically coordinated records of patient movement, supporting objective assessments and longitudinal analysis.
• 3D Medical Animation Development: Offers a standardized way to describe and exchange 3D body movements, ensuring animations are semantically aligned with healthcare terminology.
• Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) for Healthcare: Facilitates the integration of standardized 3D models and actions in immersive health applications, from patient education to rehabilitation.
• Movement Disorders Assessment: Supports professionals in analyzing and quantifying patient movements (e.g., gait analysis in Parkinson’s disease) with precise, time-segmented annotation.
• Medical Research: Promotes consistent terminology and structure in research data, improving comparability and the ability to conduct meta-analyses on 3D movement data.
• Interoperability: Enables systems using 3D movement data to communicate reliably using shared, text-based medical terminology.

Related Standards

ISO/TS 23541-2:2025 is part of a series designed to support comprehensive representation of the human body and its movement in health informatics. Related standards include:

• ISO/TS 23541-1: Health informatics - Categorial structure for representation of 3D human body position system - Part 1: Bones
• ISO 1087:2019: Terminology work and terminology science
• ISO 9241 Series: Ergonomics of human-system interaction (relevant parts on gesture interactions and biomedical effects)
• ISO/IEC 14496-16: Coding of audio-visual objects, particularly for 3D animation frameworks
• ISO/IEC 19774-1: Humanoid animation (HAnim) architecture
• IEEE STD 3333.2.1: IEEE Recommended practice for 3D medical modeling

By adhering to ISO/TS 23541-2:2025, healthcare organizations, developers, and researchers can ensure clear, consistent, and interoperable representation of 3D human body movement data, fostering better clinical outcomes and more robust health informatics systems.

Standards Content (Sample)

Technical
Specification
ISO/TS 23541-2
First edition
Health informatics — Categorial
2025-03
structure for representation of 3D
human body position system —
Part 2:
Body movement
Informatique de santé — Structure catégorielle pour la
représentation du système de positionnement du corps
humain en 3D —
Partie 2: Mouvement du corps
Reference number
© ISO 2025
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ISO copyright office
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Published in Switzerland
ii
Contents Page
Foreword .iv
Introduction .v
1 Scope . 1
2 Normative references . 1
3 Terms, definitions and abbreviations . 1
3.1 General terms .1
3.2 Characterizing categories .2
3.3 Abbreviated terms .4
4 Categorial structure . 4
4.1 Overview .4
4.2 Semantic links .4
4.2.1 hasDescription .4
4.2.2 hasAnnotation .4
4.2.3 hasModel .5
4.2.4 hasAction .5
4.2.5 hasActor .5
4.2.6 hasObservation .6
4.2.7 hasFinding .6
4.2.8 hasIntervention .7
4.2.9 hasSegment .7
Bibliography . 9

iii
Foreword
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This document was prepared by Technical Committee ISO/TC 215, Health informatics.
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Any feedback or questions on this document should be directed to the user’s national standards body. A
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iv
Introduction
In the medical field, body movements are important parts of medical recording. Gait analysis, heart pulsation,
blood flow, hemiplegic movement as well as extremity motion are representative body movements which
can require medical description. However, conventional text-based terminology does not have the capability
to express details of body movement.
With the popularity of virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR) and three-dimensional (3D) contents,
many medical 3D animations are created without clear terminological concept representation. 3D animation
messages can vary depending on the creator, audience or countries. For example, names of body parts in
a VR scene are not clearly given by standard medical terminology. Sometimes, 3D animation concepts are
described only by narrative text, which is insufficient to deliver precise medical concepts. Additionally, 3D
animations without terminological coordination do not allow terminology-based searching capability and
interoperability within the VR system.
Patients with movement disorder do not have a visual impression on their disease. The meaning of their
symptoms and signs cannot be exactly delivered to their families. They cannot understand long-term trends
of their movement. Quantitative assessments of their motions are very difficult to achieve.
This document explains how 3D medical animations are coordinated with standard medical terminology.
Categories and relations among 3D models, actions and text terminology are given in Figure 7.
By coordinating 3D body movement to text-based standard terminology, 3D medical contents will allow
standardized communication between users and creators. This is also helpful for exchanging medical
information in health-related research. The coordination helps to deliver medical concepts of 3D body
movement, and it allows search capability with standard medical terminology.
Clinicians are able to describe patient’s movement in a more detailed manner. 3D movement models
allow objective, independent assessment of patient’s symptom and disease. Quantification and long-term
assessment are more clearly achievable.
With technological advancement in sensors and optical device, it is possible to log patient’s movements
quantitatively. These data can be processed and animated in a 3D world. Continuous monitoring of patient’s
body movement is also feasible with visual impression. Patients are able to understand their disease status
in a meaningful way.
ISO/TS 23541-1 is applied to a static model. Categorial structures for static models cannot be applied to
3D medical animations because 3D animations have one additional axis of information, which is the time
dimension. Because of this additional dimension, the categorial structure of 3D animation differs in many
ways form a static model.
In a static model, concepts are coordinated with the model and the coordination occurs only once between
the model and text terminology. However, as movement of 3D model develops over time, text terminology is
coordinated with a specific time segment as well as with a specific model. For ex
...